It's been some time since I've posted, and that's because I've been incredibly busy, and when I haven't been busy I've been exhausted. And when I haven't been exhausted I've been trying to squeeze in as much self-entertainment as possible. But I want to keep this up, and I had the very strange idea to post these. "These" are notes I make, as a track listing as much as anything else, for the mix CDs I like to make. Most people listen to their MP3s on their headphones, but I'm perfectly happy with my portable CD player and an album of my own devisement. I call these CDs "The Dan Sessions", and each ends up with a pretentious subtitle. Think of these as a strange chronicle of my life in song, or as simply music recommendations. And I don't have to come up with them, because they're already written!
A New Era Begins
This disc was made during a period of change in my life that ended a sort of bout with despondency, which was also a period in which I didn't make any mixes. It immediately became a staple of long bus rides and quick-paced walks down wide, empty, condo-lined streets.
1. Saliva – “Ladies and Gentlemen”
And the “New Era” begins with a song that’s one three-and-a-half minute proclamation of forthcoming awesomeness. It’s silly and ludicrous in its brashness (“Your ears and your eyes may be bleeding”), but it rocks and somehow it makes it believes that whatever’s coming will deliver on the anticipation. Saliva isn’t anybody’s favorite band; usually they produce generic rockers, but this time they went with their instincts and delivered a genuine pick-me-up that uses phrases like “explosion of catastrophe.”
2. Fujiya & Miyagi – “Collarbone”
Every once in a while we meet something genuinely different, and it’s love at first sight. Or listen. What is this? Alternative Rock? A strange cousin of rap? Low groove jazz? A children’s rhyme? Who the heck are these guys? Their names sound Japanese. There’s a weird moment in the middle where he rolls the heck out of an “r”. There are sections whispered over bass and claps, mixed with pseudo-beat boxing. And then atonal guitar craziness. What really matters is that the first time I heard it I knew it was something special, and this ended up as one of the most-played tracks on my dearly departed radio show. Try walking down the street to this one.
3. Foo Fighters – “The Pretender”
The Foo Fighters, more than almost any band today, are capable of creating albums full of mainstream rock hits while still appealing to those who like to think of themselves as having discerning ears. This song rocks hard, but it also has a soul. “What if I say I will never surrender?” Was well onto my playlist before it showed up over the first “Dollhouse” trailer, which of course it was perfect for.
4. Vampire Weekend – “Oxford Comma”
I recently read someone, not really in a derisive way, proclaim Vampire Weekend “the Whitest Band in the World.” And yes, their biggest hit to date is about commas… sort of, anyway. It’s also about butlers and chap-stick. This is a song that seems laid-back and angry at the same time, barely contained behind the vaguely calypso rhythm. “Why would you lie about something dumb like that?” Another song that introduced me to something genuinely new.
5. PJ Harvey – “Down By the Water”
What the heck is this song even about? It’s like a low growl, wretched and lonely. It gets under your skin like an itch. PJ Harvey can do that. And it ends with a stretch nobody who hears it ever forgets, that whispered chant: “Little Fish/Big Fish/Swimming in the water/Come back here and give me my daughter.” There are strings here, guitar, drums, but they all seem under Harvey’s hypnotic spell, barely alive. A work of amazing power.
6. Matchbox Twenty – “How Far We’ve Come”
Rob Thomas is one of the greatest songwriters living. Yes, Matchbox Twenty has become so mainstream they get played on easy listening, but that’s hardly their fault, and this is a candidate for best song of the year. It’s been used in every trailer, ad, montage you can think of, but that’s because it the kind of song that genuinely works on myriad levels. It’s driving, it’s urgent, and it delivers its intended feeling with surgical precision: This is the end of this, and that is worth being sad about, but the ride delivered, and we should be dancing.
7. Flobots – “Handlebars”
I heard this song one day on the radio and it was probably the highlight of that week. It’s a song about the sin of pride, and not just that it’s a sin but why it’s a sin. It dramatizes the loss of innocence. This is a song that explains Hitler from Hitler’s perspective. That’s a lot to ask of a short piece of music, but somehow it manages it. Some people will hear it and say “there’s rapping on the radio,” as my mom always likes to. They’ll be missing something transcendant.
8. Sea Wolf – “You’re a Wolf”
For a relatively low-key song, this is one that sure gets stuck in my head a lot. There are about five lines in the whole song, but between the song manages between the quietly insistent guitar and the loping cello to keep itself feeling fresh. It pulls you in, like the semi-mystic encounter with a gypsy woman that its lyrics seem to describe. An indie gem.
9. Cold War Kids – “Hospital Beds”
This is a weird song. Cold War Kids are high-pitched and sparse, and the piano bits seem more to twinkle than play an actual tune. Much of the song seems like a sort of chant, a plea for help, but other times a strange joy seeps in. Somehow it feels to me like something out of World War I, with scenes from Atonement, though that would seem contradictory because it possesses the DNA of alternative rock, and makes no particular effort to be retro. It brings us into something so well that we’re almost startled when we’re let out of it five minutes later.
10. A Fine Frenzy – “Almost Lover”
There is no song that can bring me to the edge of tears so easily. It is almost ridiculous, how emotional this song can make me despite having no particular event in my life to tie it to. There are production pieces shimmering occasionally in the background, but it’s essentially just the singer’s voice and her fingers on the piano keys. I love sometimes just to feel; it brings me out of my life and into a place of startling beauty and sharpness. This song, especially in the startling crescendo of a bridge, does that as well as anything I’ve run across.
11. Scissors for Lefty – “Ghetto Ways”
Strategically placed to bring us out of the previous song’s mood, we have a weird, nearly incomprehensible piece of dance music. It’s like listening to a party through the wall. The chorus seems to just be a strange sort of heavy breathing… but it’s infinitely relistenable. It’s minor key enough not be jarring, but it’s still reminiscent of The Killers… after they dropped acid.
12. Rufus Wainwright – “Going to a Town”
A song written and performed with anger, sadness, and longing by an openly gay artist, this is an extremely slow build of piano rock that makes us really feel the repeated line “I’m so tired of America.” When I first heard this song, Obama was barely a blip on the radar screen, and it seemed like we were living in the last days of Rome, overrun with prejudice and malaise. Even before Wainwright starts singing about “bathing the body of Jesus Christ in blood,” he’s captured that feeling better than any other artist I’ve heard.
13. The Swell Season – “Falling Slowly”
This is a sweet little tune that somehow becomes, over the course of its length, about nothing less than everything. Male and female voices swoop over plaintive strings, lamenting how little time we have. It was from the soundtrack for the film Once, but it became much bigger than the little-seen movie it came from, and ended up winning an Oscar and putting its indie-darling creators squarely on the mainstream map. Glen Hansard makes us believe he’s falling in love and it’s making him cry, without irony and with total conviction.
14. Gomez – “How We Operate”
I discovered this song about a week before it went mainstream, largely due to an appearance on “Grey’s Anatomy”. Its main instrument is a banjo, at least for the opening minute or so, and the voice is almost country, but this is unmistakably a rock song. A rock song not quite like any other rock song. It’s like a night drive in the desert, gradually gaining momentum, adding layers, while something truly meaningful twinkles just out of reach. There are ghosts here, and sweeping strings.
15. Maximo Park – “Books from Boxes”
Maximo Park is one of those ice-cold bands with a low, melodic voice, like Longwave or Idlewild, and like most of those that are successful they somehow manage to be catchy, at least on this track. This didn’t make my collection for any special reason other than that I think it’s really good, and don’t seem to tire of it. In the first verse we hear “We can beat the sun as long as we keep moving.” And I for one believe it.
16. The Wombats – “Let’s Dance to Joy Division”
First of all, there’s a band named The Wombats. Second of all, someone wrote an entire song about listening to “Love Will Tear Us Apart” with an ironic ear. It’s peppy and fast, the single punkiest song on this disc. It made my regular playlist, and then somewhere in there it took on several more layers. This is my song about making the best of it in today’s economy. “It can all go so wrong, and we’re so happy.” It ends in laughter.
17. Fleet Foxes – “White Winter Hymnal”
This is the unlikeliest of indie hits. Time recently named it the third best song of 2008, and called it “choral roundelay.” It feels like the Beach Boys through a glass darkly, and it’s very very pretty. In only a few minutes, we’re once again in another world, this one snowbound and quiet. For all that, there’s a surprising amount of rock here, and I would hardly characterize this as a “slow song.”
18. IAMX – “President”
I never heard of IAMX before this song, but I have to seek out more of them. Like “Going to a Town”, this is a minor-key epic of piano rock. But unlike that tune, this one is post-Obama, and comes off more as an insistent proclamation of hope, a march to victory for the little guy. In a year where I found myself vaulted into politics, this song feels like where I’ve been and where my twisted dreams are going. With a circus-organ thump thrown in for good measure. It ends like a foreboding of the future.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Saturday, November 22, 2008
MemeWatch: The Twilight Backlash
Ah yes, the backlash. The movement-ized rejection of something that has already achieved great cultural popularity. The backlash as a phenomenon predates the internet... I'm sure there were plenty of people who thought that "Gone With the Wind" wasn't, y'know, that great, but the instantaneous, interactive nature of it has allowed backlashes to gain a much higher level of notoriety. If a huge cultural phenomenon isn't quite up to snuff these days, a backlash is all but inevitable. (the wikipedia article on "backlash" can be found here)
The new film "Twilight" had a better first day on Friday than either "Quantum of Solace" or the most recent Indiana Jones film. It's less than all but one of the Harry Potter movies, and not even close to what "The Dark Knight" did earlier this year, but it's still far and away the most successful opening for a movie directed by a woman (Catherine Hardwicke). For those who have been either living under a rock or in a completely teenage girl-free evironment, "Twilight" is the first in an incredibly popular series of books by Stephenie Meyer that center around the passionate-but-chaste romance of a high school everygirl, Bella Swan, and a particularly hunky vampire, Edward Cullen, mostly set in a small town in Washington state. The thing about "Twilight" that has struck me the most is that the backlash was in full swing before the "frontlash" was even really up to speed. This backlash has the most lash I've ever seen. Okay, I'll stop that now.
I'll be honest here. I haven't read any of the Twilight books, and I almost certainly won't see the movie until it shows up the discount theater, if at all. I know more than one person whose opinion I trust who absolutely loves them. But the critical consensus seems to be one of understanding-at-best (There seem to be two types of reviews, ones that talk about how it might appeal to teen girls and ignore the actual quality and those that are critical of the actual quality), and the internet... well, the internet does not seem to be willing to tolerate it.
A big part of this, I think, is that the Twilight fandom (my favorite term I've seen so far is "Twi-hards") is almost entirely female. It consists of teen girls, from tweens to college age, along with a decent sampling of their moms, the sort who like romance novels. I like to fancy myself a bit of a geek anthropologist, so to speak. I enjoy the inner workings of various fandoms, even for works I myself am not that into. And this is perhaps the most monolithic major geek fandom I've ever seen. Even "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Xena: Warrior Princess", probably the two most female skewing of the major geek fandoms I've previously looked at, had fairly large male bases, as well. This shows it's not just the female protagonist that's at issue, it's the content. "Xena" was an action show at heart, and "Buffy" was at such a high level of quality that it attracted connoisseurs of all types... plus there was karate and stuff. "Twilight" is a romance, through and through.
Also at issue is how good it really is. Twilight is often compared to the Harry Potter novels, another fandom based on a YA book series that seems to have at least slightly more girls than guys. But general consensus seems to be that the Twilight series isn't even in the same league ("USA Today" was roundly mocked for making the suggestion this week). I've never been afraid to criticize JK Rowling's prose, and "Deathly Hollows" drags way too much for what it is, but Rowling does have an intuitive grasp of how to build excitement and when things are happening in the Potter novels, there's nothing like it. As the backlashers are quick to point out, Meyer's prose has at least as many issues, her content has a strong potential to be laughable, and the plot of "Twilight" doesn't really get going until at least 300 pages into the book (It apparently takes over 200 for Bella just to realize that Edward is a vampire). The Harry Potter books and films have, for the most part, manages to avoid a full-fledged backlash despite their gargatuan popularity because most people who read them are hooked.
Let's take a look at other recent phenomena:
-"Star Wars" eventually created its own backlash with the terrible "prequel" movies. I had a friend who at one point was a hardcore Star Wars guy, but mostly dropped it circa "Attack of the Clones" when he "found out that Jar-Jar Binks created the Empire." Many universes grow richer with continued exploration... Star Wars, not so much. The Spider-Man film series probably also fits this model, as it was riding high after the first two films and nearly completely destroyed its own fandom with the failure of the climactic third film.
-"Star Trek" did get richer with continued exploration, but eventually seemed to run its course. The times, it seemed, had passed the mostly-utopian future it depicted by. Plus there was a lot of mismanagement by Paramount... "Enterprise" would sputter on for a few more strange seasons, but the "Trek" franchise as we knew it seemed to end when "Nemesis" opened opposite a Harry Potter film and tanked. People didn't hate "Trek", they just weren't huge fans. But now the new trailer for the JJ Abrams "Star Trek" film has gotten startling buzz, and it's like the franchise never went away.
-"Lord of the Rings" has its detractors, but the books, and especially the films are so seminal and high-quality that there doesn't seem to have been much of a backlash, at least not within the fandom community.
-"Buffy" and "Battlestar Galactica" are probably representative a group of works that were never quite popular enough to create a backlash, but attracted a strong, loyal following due to their high quality. Both have large numbers of online fans who insist that they should be considered for the best TV series of all time... period, and are very influential within the current "geek" community. But they remain relatively lesser known in the world-at-large, and that seems to have helped.
-"Firefly"'s hardcore fans created their own backlash, not the work itself. It would probably be in the above group, except for the fact that an early cancellation created a strong evangelical streak in the fandom. This got them "Serenity", as well as several comic book miniseries, but it also resulted in everyone else on the internet getting really annoyed.
-"The Dark Knight" is probably the biggest geek phenomenon of this year so far, even more so than "Twilight". At first it appeared it might be among that elite that is so good it's just impossible to hate. But as people thought about it more, and it became even more widely seen, it began to be criticized for its relentless gloom. It's a great movie, but the staying power is in question. It recently showed up at our local discount theater, and I haven't gone to see it again yet, and I'm not sure I will until it shows up on DVD.
-"Pirates of the Caribbean" was totally unexpected, and was driven, yes, by young women. Guys liked pirates in the same way they like ninjas and zombies and all those things, but it was hard for them to participate in a fandom where the main debate was immediately whether Depp or Bloom was cuter. Then the second two movies had interesting bits but were overlong and all over the place, and the fandom did not appear to withstand the backlash. Comparable might be "Transformers", which came out of nowhere with a movie (by Michael Bay!) that was really hard not to like. And, Megan Fox and all, it seems to be more male-skewing. But it has the strong potential to have that luster taken off by subsequent sequels, we'll see.
These, of course, are only some of the geek-related examples recently ("Doctor Who" may have so far miraculously managed to be the most backlash-free of all). There have of course been many other kinds of backlashes, but this is where I like to think my "area of expertise" lies. ;) So "Twilight" has the disadvantage of being a female-oriented fandom based on material that already seems to be showing cracks. io9 has been nice enough to round-up some of the most blatant and hilarious examples of recent online "Twilight"-bashing here. Whatever side you're on, this should be good for a laugh. It certainly cracked me up.
The new film "Twilight" had a better first day on Friday than either "Quantum of Solace" or the most recent Indiana Jones film. It's less than all but one of the Harry Potter movies, and not even close to what "The Dark Knight" did earlier this year, but it's still far and away the most successful opening for a movie directed by a woman (Catherine Hardwicke). For those who have been either living under a rock or in a completely teenage girl-free evironment, "Twilight" is the first in an incredibly popular series of books by Stephenie Meyer that center around the passionate-but-chaste romance of a high school everygirl, Bella Swan, and a particularly hunky vampire, Edward Cullen, mostly set in a small town in Washington state. The thing about "Twilight" that has struck me the most is that the backlash was in full swing before the "frontlash" was even really up to speed. This backlash has the most lash I've ever seen. Okay, I'll stop that now.
I'll be honest here. I haven't read any of the Twilight books, and I almost certainly won't see the movie until it shows up the discount theater, if at all. I know more than one person whose opinion I trust who absolutely loves them. But the critical consensus seems to be one of understanding-at-best (There seem to be two types of reviews, ones that talk about how it might appeal to teen girls and ignore the actual quality and those that are critical of the actual quality), and the internet... well, the internet does not seem to be willing to tolerate it.
A big part of this, I think, is that the Twilight fandom (my favorite term I've seen so far is "Twi-hards") is almost entirely female. It consists of teen girls, from tweens to college age, along with a decent sampling of their moms, the sort who like romance novels. I like to fancy myself a bit of a geek anthropologist, so to speak. I enjoy the inner workings of various fandoms, even for works I myself am not that into. And this is perhaps the most monolithic major geek fandom I've ever seen. Even "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Xena: Warrior Princess", probably the two most female skewing of the major geek fandoms I've previously looked at, had fairly large male bases, as well. This shows it's not just the female protagonist that's at issue, it's the content. "Xena" was an action show at heart, and "Buffy" was at such a high level of quality that it attracted connoisseurs of all types... plus there was karate and stuff. "Twilight" is a romance, through and through.
Also at issue is how good it really is. Twilight is often compared to the Harry Potter novels, another fandom based on a YA book series that seems to have at least slightly more girls than guys. But general consensus seems to be that the Twilight series isn't even in the same league ("USA Today" was roundly mocked for making the suggestion this week). I've never been afraid to criticize JK Rowling's prose, and "Deathly Hollows" drags way too much for what it is, but Rowling does have an intuitive grasp of how to build excitement and when things are happening in the Potter novels, there's nothing like it. As the backlashers are quick to point out, Meyer's prose has at least as many issues, her content has a strong potential to be laughable, and the plot of "Twilight" doesn't really get going until at least 300 pages into the book (It apparently takes over 200 for Bella just to realize that Edward is a vampire). The Harry Potter books and films have, for the most part, manages to avoid a full-fledged backlash despite their gargatuan popularity because most people who read them are hooked.
Let's take a look at other recent phenomena:
-"Star Wars" eventually created its own backlash with the terrible "prequel" movies. I had a friend who at one point was a hardcore Star Wars guy, but mostly dropped it circa "Attack of the Clones" when he "found out that Jar-Jar Binks created the Empire." Many universes grow richer with continued exploration... Star Wars, not so much. The Spider-Man film series probably also fits this model, as it was riding high after the first two films and nearly completely destroyed its own fandom with the failure of the climactic third film.
-"Star Trek" did get richer with continued exploration, but eventually seemed to run its course. The times, it seemed, had passed the mostly-utopian future it depicted by. Plus there was a lot of mismanagement by Paramount... "Enterprise" would sputter on for a few more strange seasons, but the "Trek" franchise as we knew it seemed to end when "Nemesis" opened opposite a Harry Potter film and tanked. People didn't hate "Trek", they just weren't huge fans. But now the new trailer for the JJ Abrams "Star Trek" film has gotten startling buzz, and it's like the franchise never went away.
-"Lord of the Rings" has its detractors, but the books, and especially the films are so seminal and high-quality that there doesn't seem to have been much of a backlash, at least not within the fandom community.
-"Buffy" and "Battlestar Galactica" are probably representative a group of works that were never quite popular enough to create a backlash, but attracted a strong, loyal following due to their high quality. Both have large numbers of online fans who insist that they should be considered for the best TV series of all time... period, and are very influential within the current "geek" community. But they remain relatively lesser known in the world-at-large, and that seems to have helped.
-"Firefly"'s hardcore fans created their own backlash, not the work itself. It would probably be in the above group, except for the fact that an early cancellation created a strong evangelical streak in the fandom. This got them "Serenity", as well as several comic book miniseries, but it also resulted in everyone else on the internet getting really annoyed.
-"The Dark Knight" is probably the biggest geek phenomenon of this year so far, even more so than "Twilight". At first it appeared it might be among that elite that is so good it's just impossible to hate. But as people thought about it more, and it became even more widely seen, it began to be criticized for its relentless gloom. It's a great movie, but the staying power is in question. It recently showed up at our local discount theater, and I haven't gone to see it again yet, and I'm not sure I will until it shows up on DVD.
-"Pirates of the Caribbean" was totally unexpected, and was driven, yes, by young women. Guys liked pirates in the same way they like ninjas and zombies and all those things, but it was hard for them to participate in a fandom where the main debate was immediately whether Depp or Bloom was cuter. Then the second two movies had interesting bits but were overlong and all over the place, and the fandom did not appear to withstand the backlash. Comparable might be "Transformers", which came out of nowhere with a movie (by Michael Bay!) that was really hard not to like. And, Megan Fox and all, it seems to be more male-skewing. But it has the strong potential to have that luster taken off by subsequent sequels, we'll see.
These, of course, are only some of the geek-related examples recently ("Doctor Who" may have so far miraculously managed to be the most backlash-free of all). There have of course been many other kinds of backlashes, but this is where I like to think my "area of expertise" lies. ;) So "Twilight" has the disadvantage of being a female-oriented fandom based on material that already seems to be showing cracks. io9 has been nice enough to round-up some of the most blatant and hilarious examples of recent online "Twilight"-bashing here. Whatever side you're on, this should be good for a laugh. It certainly cracked me up.
Planet Earth Round-Up
In all the fuss about the US election, it's easy to forget that there's a whole big world out there, with its own issues, and it doesn't stop having them because "change has come to America." Here's an round-up of what's going on all around this wonderful planet of ours:
-The crisis in Zimbabwe continues to drag on. This week a planned mission to highlight the humanitarian problems in that country from Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, and Graca Machel (wife of Nelson Mandela) was cancelled because the Mugabe government didn't want them showing up. The stated reason? They would boost Morgan Tsvangirai's opposition party. When saving your starving citizens is considered a partisan act for the other side, you know you're in trouble.
-Protests and violence continue in Bangkok as the citizens demand the ouster of the ruling People Power Party (PPP), which, although democratically elected, the protesters claim is a front for corrupt former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. One Prime Minister was removed for appearing as a paid guest on a cooking show (apparently a big no-no under Thai law), but the PPP replaced him with Shinawatra's brother-in-law. Now the protesters are being attacked by a series of grenades, which have injured many. Sone appear to have been launched from the Bangkok Police Headquarters, which protesters say proves they come from the government. The situation appears to be escalating at this time.
-In somewhat lighter news, the top Islamic body in Malaysia, the National Fatwa Council, ruled that Muslims should not practice yoga because it contains elements of other religions and could "corrupt" Muslims. This comes after another recent ban on "tomboys." You know, considering Malaysia isn't quite a first-world nation by most standards, you'd think they would have other things to worry about. On the other hand, at least women can drive in Malaysia, unlike, say, Saudi Arabia.
-It appears that, for now, both sides in the civil war (another one?) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have agreed that Virunga National Park, the oldest national park in Africa and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, should be neutral ground. Park rangers returned this week after previously fleeing the fighting. Virunga is home to a closely-studied group of 200 Mountain Gorillas. It is estimated that there are about 700 Mountain Gorillas left in the world.
-al-Qaeda may be the cool new terrorists, but other terrorist groups are still around after many decades. ETA, the Basque separatist group, is back in the news after the arrest of Mikel Garikoltz Aspiazu (Basque is the one European language not related to any other known language). Aspiazu is suspected to be the current head of ETA, and is charged with masterminding a series of attacks that have killed over a hundred people, mostly close to the Basque homeland in Northwestern Spain. Concerns for the security of the court proceedings were so great that the identity of the judge is being kept secret.
-Some Persian Gulf states might ask "Global financial crisis? What global financial crisis?" The Palm Jumeirah, a man-made palm-shaped island off Dubai, opened this week to a huge star-studded party, as well as a $20 million fireworks show. The island features resort hotels, luxury homes, expensive shopping, and entertainment. The island apparently doubles Dubai's total shoreline. Among those seen at the opening party? Robert de Niro, Janet Jackson, the Duchess of York, Charlize Theron, Kylie Minogue, Lindsay Lohan, and, the key to any gathering, one of the Olsen twins.
-The crisis in Zimbabwe continues to drag on. This week a planned mission to highlight the humanitarian problems in that country from Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, and Graca Machel (wife of Nelson Mandela) was cancelled because the Mugabe government didn't want them showing up. The stated reason? They would boost Morgan Tsvangirai's opposition party. When saving your starving citizens is considered a partisan act for the other side, you know you're in trouble.
-Protests and violence continue in Bangkok as the citizens demand the ouster of the ruling People Power Party (PPP), which, although democratically elected, the protesters claim is a front for corrupt former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. One Prime Minister was removed for appearing as a paid guest on a cooking show (apparently a big no-no under Thai law), but the PPP replaced him with Shinawatra's brother-in-law. Now the protesters are being attacked by a series of grenades, which have injured many. Sone appear to have been launched from the Bangkok Police Headquarters, which protesters say proves they come from the government. The situation appears to be escalating at this time.
-In somewhat lighter news, the top Islamic body in Malaysia, the National Fatwa Council, ruled that Muslims should not practice yoga because it contains elements of other religions and could "corrupt" Muslims. This comes after another recent ban on "tomboys." You know, considering Malaysia isn't quite a first-world nation by most standards, you'd think they would have other things to worry about. On the other hand, at least women can drive in Malaysia, unlike, say, Saudi Arabia.
-It appears that, for now, both sides in the civil war (another one?) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have agreed that Virunga National Park, the oldest national park in Africa and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, should be neutral ground. Park rangers returned this week after previously fleeing the fighting. Virunga is home to a closely-studied group of 200 Mountain Gorillas. It is estimated that there are about 700 Mountain Gorillas left in the world.
-al-Qaeda may be the cool new terrorists, but other terrorist groups are still around after many decades. ETA, the Basque separatist group, is back in the news after the arrest of Mikel Garikoltz Aspiazu (Basque is the one European language not related to any other known language). Aspiazu is suspected to be the current head of ETA, and is charged with masterminding a series of attacks that have killed over a hundred people, mostly close to the Basque homeland in Northwestern Spain. Concerns for the security of the court proceedings were so great that the identity of the judge is being kept secret.
-Some Persian Gulf states might ask "Global financial crisis? What global financial crisis?" The Palm Jumeirah, a man-made palm-shaped island off Dubai, opened this week to a huge star-studded party, as well as a $20 million fireworks show. The island features resort hotels, luxury homes, expensive shopping, and entertainment. The island apparently doubles Dubai's total shoreline. Among those seen at the opening party? Robert de Niro, Janet Jackson, the Duchess of York, Charlize Theron, Kylie Minogue, Lindsay Lohan, and, the key to any gathering, one of the Olsen twins.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Shady's Back
Due to the rigors of my job, we’ve been a little behind here on the Walrus File, but I don’t want that to continue. So… some thoughts.
-Early Obama cabinet appointments/rumors have been extremely interesting. Eric Holder would be the first African-American Attorney General. Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State? Or maybe John Kerry? Will Gates stay on at Defense (which I think would be a bad idea, but I was never a big fan of the “bipartisanship” craze.)? Tom Daschle, the former Senate Minority Leader from South Dakota, appears to be in line for Secretary of Health and Human Services. And today comes word that the top choice for Secretary of Homeland Security is the current Governor of Arizona, Janet Napolitano. Many have criticized this group as too full of “Clintonistas” and not symbolic enough of the whole “Change” meme. There’s still plenty of time left for that, but I tend to agree at least from a trend-watching point of view.
-Pirates are the new terrorists, which is pretty funny from a certain point of view. First an arms shipment from the Ukraine, and now a Saudi oil tanker with a cargo worth at least a hundred million dollars, have been making front page headlines after pirate hijackings off the lawless coast of Somalia. Pirates are on the verge of becoming the New Missing White Women in our news media. And really, can you blame CNN for spending so much time on the pirate story when everything else is just sort of dank. The Columbus Dispatch’s front page headline today was about “A Cornucopia of Gloom.” I think the copy editors were getting bored. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda is releasing bizarre videos where they talk about how Obama and Colin Powell are “house negroes”. I guess it’s still the 1920s in the mountains of Pakistan. Also, we learn al-Qaeda are big fans of Malcolm X. Who knew?
-Forget gay marriage, bailouts appear to be the real slippery slope. Give one to AIG, now everybody and his brother wants one. Some may need them… others I’m not so sure about. How to choose?
-On the plus side, Thanksgiving is coming up. Our local Giant Eagle is well stocked with giant forty dollar turkeys. Is anyone out there headed home for the holiday? And if so, where are you going, and how are you getting there?
-It’s Ohio State/Michigan week! The greatest rivalry on the gorram planet, if we do say so ourselves. The Buckeyes are the massive favorites, but they always say that you can throw out the records when these teams play. I had the opportunity this week to meet Art Schlichter, the last OSU QB to start the big game as a freshman. He’s an interesting guy. This Saturday Terrelle Pryor will be the next. The game will be here in Columbus, and will result in widespread insanity no matter the outcome.
-COTA (the Central Ohio Transit Authority, aka the local bus system I ride everywhere) is moving its offices downtown. According to the “Dispatch”, there will be no easy available parking for employees, which is on purpose. The director says that he now wants all employees, including himself, to ride the bus to work. I’m sure that’s going over well.
-Early Obama cabinet appointments/rumors have been extremely interesting. Eric Holder would be the first African-American Attorney General. Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State? Or maybe John Kerry? Will Gates stay on at Defense (which I think would be a bad idea, but I was never a big fan of the “bipartisanship” craze.)? Tom Daschle, the former Senate Minority Leader from South Dakota, appears to be in line for Secretary of Health and Human Services. And today comes word that the top choice for Secretary of Homeland Security is the current Governor of Arizona, Janet Napolitano. Many have criticized this group as too full of “Clintonistas” and not symbolic enough of the whole “Change” meme. There’s still plenty of time left for that, but I tend to agree at least from a trend-watching point of view.
-Pirates are the new terrorists, which is pretty funny from a certain point of view. First an arms shipment from the Ukraine, and now a Saudi oil tanker with a cargo worth at least a hundred million dollars, have been making front page headlines after pirate hijackings off the lawless coast of Somalia. Pirates are on the verge of becoming the New Missing White Women in our news media. And really, can you blame CNN for spending so much time on the pirate story when everything else is just sort of dank. The Columbus Dispatch’s front page headline today was about “A Cornucopia of Gloom.” I think the copy editors were getting bored. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda is releasing bizarre videos where they talk about how Obama and Colin Powell are “house negroes”. I guess it’s still the 1920s in the mountains of Pakistan. Also, we learn al-Qaeda are big fans of Malcolm X. Who knew?
-Forget gay marriage, bailouts appear to be the real slippery slope. Give one to AIG, now everybody and his brother wants one. Some may need them… others I’m not so sure about. How to choose?
-On the plus side, Thanksgiving is coming up. Our local Giant Eagle is well stocked with giant forty dollar turkeys. Is anyone out there headed home for the holiday? And if so, where are you going, and how are you getting there?
-It’s Ohio State/Michigan week! The greatest rivalry on the gorram planet, if we do say so ourselves. The Buckeyes are the massive favorites, but they always say that you can throw out the records when these teams play. I had the opportunity this week to meet Art Schlichter, the last OSU QB to start the big game as a freshman. He’s an interesting guy. This Saturday Terrelle Pryor will be the next. The game will be here in Columbus, and will result in widespread insanity no matter the outcome.
-COTA (the Central Ohio Transit Authority, aka the local bus system I ride everywhere) is moving its offices downtown. According to the “Dispatch”, there will be no easy available parking for employees, which is on purpose. The director says that he now wants all employees, including himself, to ride the bus to work. I’m sure that’s going over well.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
I Am Evolving Even As I Write This
The thing about evolution is that it's not obvious, no matter what the Richard Dawkinses of the world may think. Only a few animals have a complete fossil record of growth and change. More often, it seems as if species have flourished out of relative obscurity and then died out. Evolution as a process must take place relatively quickly, which doesn't make sense if we follow the original Darwinian theory. If evolution were a random process, based merely on "survival of the fittest," it would be extremely slow. The reason, I think, that Darwin retains so many staunch defenders is a) that he was mostly right, and b) that the alternative of the moment is, for all intents and purposes, biblical literalism, which won't wash with anyone with a vaguely scientific mind.
So what's the solution? For a long time, scientists have been proposing something called "punctuated equilibrium", which involves many changes taking place rapidly due to a sudden change in enviroment. However, this strikes me as mostly a case of verbal gymnastics, as it doesn't explain how species would be able to adapt quickly rather than just, you know, die. But yesterday news out of Princeton shed new light on the matter for me, and I'm sure many others as well.
Researchers were studying the electron transport chain in cells (this is the system that regulates energy use), and discovered that the chains were able to correct any artificial mutations imposed on them. They looked at how the chains did this, and found that they were making minute corrections all the time. Basically, organisms naturally make changes at the cellular level in order to better fit their environment, which makes them, hey, one of the fittest who gets to survive.
If this sounds like "intelligent design," that's because it is. But it's intelligent design by our own DNA, rather than some invisible person in the sky. What this really does is provide an explanation for how evolution works, rather than an alternate theory. Some more fascinating details can be found here.
So what's the solution? For a long time, scientists have been proposing something called "punctuated equilibrium", which involves many changes taking place rapidly due to a sudden change in enviroment. However, this strikes me as mostly a case of verbal gymnastics, as it doesn't explain how species would be able to adapt quickly rather than just, you know, die. But yesterday news out of Princeton shed new light on the matter for me, and I'm sure many others as well.
Researchers were studying the electron transport chain in cells (this is the system that regulates energy use), and discovered that the chains were able to correct any artificial mutations imposed on them. They looked at how the chains did this, and found that they were making minute corrections all the time. Basically, organisms naturally make changes at the cellular level in order to better fit their environment, which makes them, hey, one of the fittest who gets to survive.
If this sounds like "intelligent design," that's because it is. But it's intelligent design by our own DNA, rather than some invisible person in the sky. What this really does is provide an explanation for how evolution works, rather than an alternate theory. Some more fascinating details can be found here.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Bits: Monk Fight Edition
-The British Telegraph newspaper has a fun article that lists 50 things you didn't know about Barack Obama. I actually knew a couple of these. Interestingly, none of the 50 involves him being a terrorist, but he did have a pet monkey at one point and has read every Harry Potter novel, so same difference I suppose.
-By popular demand, more cholera news. There is another, perhaps more serious outbreak taking place right now at a refugee camp in the Congo. As you may now, the Nation Formerly Known as Zaire is in the midst of yet another civil war, and thousands of people are being driven into small areas in these makeshift camps. There's a cease-fire in place right now, but it is apparently unraveling. There are fears that the disease will spread if the cease-fire fails and the refugees are forced to scatter. Complicating matters is a lack of the medication that cure the disease, as well as an organized method of distribution.
-The police had to be called to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, supposedly built on the site where Jesus was born, after monks from two different sects got into a violent brawl. The church has long been run in an uneasy joint arrangement between the Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, and Coptic churches. In this case the Greeks tried to block a procession by the Armenians, "so that the Armenians could not establish a claim which they do not have." Um... anyway, violence ensued. This is the same place where there has been a ladder outside the entrance since the 19th century because the three sects can't agree on who has the authority to take it down.
-Cracked.com's latest history lesson/list/funny caption collection involves the six stupidest points people died trying to prove.
-The latest thing we're boycotting: Utah, for the Mormon Church's aggressive support of California's gay marriage ban, unique because it took away from people a right that had already been granted. As things we're boycotting go, this one makes more sense than most.
-Today's Free TV on the Internet: The Daily Show/Colbert Report election special. Not as great as it could have been, but still has Stephen Colbert delivering state electoral votes with a parrot perched on his shoulder.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Movie Reviews for People Who Go to the Dollar Movies After Work: Tropic Thunder
This is the first movie I've reviewed in this series that was actually successful, but that doesn't mean you should pay top dollar for it! Tropic Thunder is a middling Hollywood comedy that gets quite a bit of its appeal from its A-list talent. It's directed by the actor Ben Stiller, and he got a bunch of his friends, including Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey, Nick Nolte, Steve Coogan, and yeah, Tom Cruise, who has a ball as the new modern stereotype of a movie mogul, to appear in it, not to mention a myriad of cameos and in-jokes.
The basic premise is that a bunch of actors making a Vietnam movie end up stranded in the jungle. They think the cameras are still rolling (even after their director (Coogan) steps on a land mine and blows up in front of them), and when they stumble across a bunch of heroin traffickers their movie turns into real life. Stiller's character is an over-the-hill action star, making a bid for mainstream credibility. Downey Jr. is an Australian actor, a five-time Oscar winner who doesn't break character when the cameras stop rolling. For this movie he's had surgery to make himself black... Yes, in the era of the Obama presidency, blackface is apparently finally acceptable comedic fodder. Black is a comedian best known for fart-joke movies who spends most of the movie in heroin withdrawal, which we're also now apparently able to play for laughs.
Rather than a lot of huge laughs or really great lines, this movie generally just does everything with a smile on its face. It has several swear words per sentence, but the movie it reminded me of the most might be, weirdly, another Stiller film, Zoolander. But there's nothing here on the level of "How are they supposed to learn to read if they can't even fit inside the building?" There's a lot of little, tonal jokes given to us rapid fire. The audience wasn't nearly as into it as some other comedies I've seen recently, even Get Smart. That said, this probably required a higher level of skill from everyone involved than a silly spy comedy, as a lot of it depends on timing and how swear words are delivered. This may have had a higher percentage of unintelligible dialogue than any other mainstream comedy I've been to, and I'm not sure if that's a good sign or not. Probably not.
There are a lot of good things here, but I'm not sure they ever come together into anything real. Downey Jr. got a lot of the press, and deservedly so. He just goes on these extended, nonsensical riffs, and they're probably the best thing in the movie ("I know who I am! I'm a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude!"). Nolte, playing the soldier upon whose story the movie is based, has fun pulling out every military cliche in the book, but becomes less interesting once we learn the real truth about him. Black's character just seems superfluous. It's like he was added to create chaos, but he doesn't create enough chaos to justify his existence.
This review feels disjointed, but this is a disjointed movie. I think it probably got better reviews than it deserved. It has some funny moments, but it has too many swings and misses. If you were smart enough to skip the big movie theater, make this a dollar movie.
The basic premise is that a bunch of actors making a Vietnam movie end up stranded in the jungle. They think the cameras are still rolling (even after their director (Coogan) steps on a land mine and blows up in front of them), and when they stumble across a bunch of heroin traffickers their movie turns into real life. Stiller's character is an over-the-hill action star, making a bid for mainstream credibility. Downey Jr. is an Australian actor, a five-time Oscar winner who doesn't break character when the cameras stop rolling. For this movie he's had surgery to make himself black... Yes, in the era of the Obama presidency, blackface is apparently finally acceptable comedic fodder. Black is a comedian best known for fart-joke movies who spends most of the movie in heroin withdrawal, which we're also now apparently able to play for laughs.
Rather than a lot of huge laughs or really great lines, this movie generally just does everything with a smile on its face. It has several swear words per sentence, but the movie it reminded me of the most might be, weirdly, another Stiller film, Zoolander. But there's nothing here on the level of "How are they supposed to learn to read if they can't even fit inside the building?" There's a lot of little, tonal jokes given to us rapid fire. The audience wasn't nearly as into it as some other comedies I've seen recently, even Get Smart. That said, this probably required a higher level of skill from everyone involved than a silly spy comedy, as a lot of it depends on timing and how swear words are delivered. This may have had a higher percentage of unintelligible dialogue than any other mainstream comedy I've been to, and I'm not sure if that's a good sign or not. Probably not.
There are a lot of good things here, but I'm not sure they ever come together into anything real. Downey Jr. got a lot of the press, and deservedly so. He just goes on these extended, nonsensical riffs, and they're probably the best thing in the movie ("I know who I am! I'm a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude!"). Nolte, playing the soldier upon whose story the movie is based, has fun pulling out every military cliche in the book, but becomes less interesting once we learn the real truth about him. Black's character just seems superfluous. It's like he was added to create chaos, but he doesn't create enough chaos to justify his existence.
This review feels disjointed, but this is a disjointed movie. I think it probably got better reviews than it deserved. It has some funny moments, but it has too many swings and misses. If you were smart enough to skip the big movie theater, make this a dollar movie.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Books: Islands in the Sea of Madness
So, as the election screamed down the rails like Ozzy Osbourne's Crazy Train, not to mention the economy doing an imitation of the Hindenburg, we were all left with a little excess stress. And if you're like me, one way to deal with all of that is to escape into the world of books. Our loyal readers will know I like Sci-Fi, and the last three books I finished were all on the short list for the Hugos and Nebulas this past year. (The Sci-Fi equivalents of the Oscars/Pulitzers/whatever). Despite theoretically sharing a common genre, it'd be hard to find three books that are more different. I thoroughly enjoyed all of them, and wanted to bring you my recommendations...
The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon
This book is the most recent winner of Sci-Fi's highest annual honor, the Hugo Award for Best Novel. Chabon is one of American literature's brightest young turks, and in this book he's created something so unique that one wonders where he possibly could have gotten his ideas from. The most basic description for it is a noir set in an alternate history, though that doesn't quite do it justice. The story is set in the year 2008, in a district of Alaska specially set aside for Jews. The main language is yiddish, and the capital is the burgeoning metropolis of Sitka, with a population in the millions. Apparently there was an actual historical movement to do just this following the end of World War II, as opposed to, say, the creation of Israel, but it was scuttled by a congressman from Alaska. The novel diverges from our history simply by having said congressman get hit by a car.
Our protagonist is a down-on-his-luck detective, determined to investigate the murder of a heroin addict believed by some orthodox jews to have been a potential messiah despite the impending "reversion" of the District of Sitka to the United States (think of the situation with Hong Kong and China). His world is a cold, rainy place, populated by beautifully sketched characters and conspiracies. The real treat in the novel is Chabon's facility with language, which can make a strange kind of poetry out of descriptions of an old man's coat or a warm doughnut. Great stuff.
Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer
Unless you count Margaret Atwood, whose occasional forays into the genre have resulted in such classics as The Handmaid's Tale, Robert J. Sawyer is probably Canada's most successful Sci-Fi author. He writes hard science fiction, but general comes at things from an anthropological angle rather than one of physics, which makes him harder to categorize. His most famous work is probably his series that began with Hominids, in which scientists make contact with an alternate universe where Neanderthals became the dominant species of humanity.
Calculating God is obviously the work of the same author, though the storyline and the ideas set out are very different. The book begins, comical in its matter-of-factness, with the landing of an alien spaceship outside the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. An spider-like alien gets out, enters the museum, and asks if it could see a paleontologist. That paleontologist is the book's main character, and the book consists mostly of his internal debates and conversations with the alien, who is far more interested in scientific research than in meeting our leaders.
The twist is that the aliens, based on their observations of the universe, have come to the conclusion that science has proven the existence of God. Their observations of Earth only confirm this. The scientist is an atheist, and we discover he is dying of cancer. So the debates between the two, mostly regarding the nature of life and universe, take on an unusual, fascinating tone. The alien makes the scientific case for the existence of God, quoting statistics about the variance of constants, while the scientist makes the emotional, faith-based case against the existence of God. If there is a God who created the laws of physics, why would he create cancer? What possible being could morally justify so much suffering?
Despite the occasional bit of jargon, the book is one of the quickest, easiest reads I've come across in a while. It's hard to put my finger on why. It would have been easy for Sawyer to fall into the usual trap of Hard SF, to be distracted by the science at the expense of our own enjoyment of the story, but he avoids this with strong characterization, and a vivid depiction of the warm friendship that builds between the scientist and the alien. This is that rare specimen, alien who, without just being a human with pointy ears, feels like a real "person". The book isn't perfect, and there's a totally unnecessary subplot involving terrorists targeting fossils, but it was one of my favorite random finds in a long time.
Halting State by Charles Stross
Charles Stross is a British writer who has a way of making made-up technojargon sound like good, smooth writing. How he does this I have no idea, but I think it has something to do with strong characterization and not being afraid to make bold stylistic choices. Halting State is a lot of things, but one thing it's not is simple to read. It jumps among a number of characters, all the while being written in the second person, mixing a strong scottish brogue with internet-speak both real and imagined. How do you write in a scottish brogue? Again, I'm not really sure, but Stross definitely manages it. ("You cannae understand why the prize twat isna answering his IM") This is a story set circa 2020, and centering around the world of virtual reality gaming. Probably the main through-line is provided by a detective who is assigned to investigate a seemingly impossible bank robbery with real-world implications carried out in a sort of next-gen "World of Warcraft" by a band of orcs "with a dragon along for fire support." Science Fiction was slow discovering the internet, but between this book and others like last year's tremendous Hugo winner, Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge, the the web is building up its own field of SF lit. It's about time.
The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon
This book is the most recent winner of Sci-Fi's highest annual honor, the Hugo Award for Best Novel. Chabon is one of American literature's brightest young turks, and in this book he's created something so unique that one wonders where he possibly could have gotten his ideas from. The most basic description for it is a noir set in an alternate history, though that doesn't quite do it justice. The story is set in the year 2008, in a district of Alaska specially set aside for Jews. The main language is yiddish, and the capital is the burgeoning metropolis of Sitka, with a population in the millions. Apparently there was an actual historical movement to do just this following the end of World War II, as opposed to, say, the creation of Israel, but it was scuttled by a congressman from Alaska. The novel diverges from our history simply by having said congressman get hit by a car.
Our protagonist is a down-on-his-luck detective, determined to investigate the murder of a heroin addict believed by some orthodox jews to have been a potential messiah despite the impending "reversion" of the District of Sitka to the United States (think of the situation with Hong Kong and China). His world is a cold, rainy place, populated by beautifully sketched characters and conspiracies. The real treat in the novel is Chabon's facility with language, which can make a strange kind of poetry out of descriptions of an old man's coat or a warm doughnut. Great stuff.
Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer
Unless you count Margaret Atwood, whose occasional forays into the genre have resulted in such classics as The Handmaid's Tale, Robert J. Sawyer is probably Canada's most successful Sci-Fi author. He writes hard science fiction, but general comes at things from an anthropological angle rather than one of physics, which makes him harder to categorize. His most famous work is probably his series that began with Hominids, in which scientists make contact with an alternate universe where Neanderthals became the dominant species of humanity.
Calculating God is obviously the work of the same author, though the storyline and the ideas set out are very different. The book begins, comical in its matter-of-factness, with the landing of an alien spaceship outside the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. An spider-like alien gets out, enters the museum, and asks if it could see a paleontologist. That paleontologist is the book's main character, and the book consists mostly of his internal debates and conversations with the alien, who is far more interested in scientific research than in meeting our leaders.
The twist is that the aliens, based on their observations of the universe, have come to the conclusion that science has proven the existence of God. Their observations of Earth only confirm this. The scientist is an atheist, and we discover he is dying of cancer. So the debates between the two, mostly regarding the nature of life and universe, take on an unusual, fascinating tone. The alien makes the scientific case for the existence of God, quoting statistics about the variance of constants, while the scientist makes the emotional, faith-based case against the existence of God. If there is a God who created the laws of physics, why would he create cancer? What possible being could morally justify so much suffering?
Despite the occasional bit of jargon, the book is one of the quickest, easiest reads I've come across in a while. It's hard to put my finger on why. It would have been easy for Sawyer to fall into the usual trap of Hard SF, to be distracted by the science at the expense of our own enjoyment of the story, but he avoids this with strong characterization, and a vivid depiction of the warm friendship that builds between the scientist and the alien. This is that rare specimen, alien who, without just being a human with pointy ears, feels like a real "person". The book isn't perfect, and there's a totally unnecessary subplot involving terrorists targeting fossils, but it was one of my favorite random finds in a long time.
Halting State by Charles Stross
Charles Stross is a British writer who has a way of making made-up technojargon sound like good, smooth writing. How he does this I have no idea, but I think it has something to do with strong characterization and not being afraid to make bold stylistic choices. Halting State is a lot of things, but one thing it's not is simple to read. It jumps among a number of characters, all the while being written in the second person, mixing a strong scottish brogue with internet-speak both real and imagined. How do you write in a scottish brogue? Again, I'm not really sure, but Stross definitely manages it. ("You cannae understand why the prize twat isna answering his IM") This is a story set circa 2020, and centering around the world of virtual reality gaming. Probably the main through-line is provided by a detective who is assigned to investigate a seemingly impossible bank robbery with real-world implications carried out in a sort of next-gen "World of Warcraft" by a band of orcs "with a dragon along for fire support." Science Fiction was slow discovering the internet, but between this book and others like last year's tremendous Hugo winner, Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge, the the web is building up its own field of SF lit. It's about time.
We're Back, Baby
So... Barack Obama will be the 44th President of the United States of America. He won somewhere north of 370 electoral votes, including pretty much every swing state with the exception of Missouri. He won in places like Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia, and Colorado. It was an historic moment, one of the greatest I have been a part of in my adult life. People stopped in the street, dancing, singing, and hugging total strangers. I have never seen anything like it. I think it surprised even Obama's biggest supporters, the level of emotional outpouring. It wasn't just history, it was us as a nation standing up and saying, no, this is who we are, we're not going to spiral into oblivion. I have never been prouder to be an American.
Life goes on. Here's a story I haven't seen elsewhere: There has been a major cholera outbreak on the campus of China's Hainan University, and it's resulted in the gradual breakdown of civilization. Though cholera can be treated with a three-day course of treatment and is no longer considered fatal in developing countries, the Chinese government has quarantined the campus. Food is running out, and the military is trying and failing to control the crowds. It's like a dry run for when the big epidemic hits. If the disease doesn't get you, the quarantine will. The media hasn't picked up this story, but one female student on campus has been writing a harrowing blog that is getting some attention on the net. Read about this here.
Life goes on. Here's a story I haven't seen elsewhere: There has been a major cholera outbreak on the campus of China's Hainan University, and it's resulted in the gradual breakdown of civilization. Though cholera can be treated with a three-day course of treatment and is no longer considered fatal in developing countries, the Chinese government has quarantined the campus. Food is running out, and the military is trying and failing to control the crowds. It's like a dry run for when the big epidemic hits. If the disease doesn't get you, the quarantine will. The media hasn't picked up this story, but one female student on campus has been writing a harrowing blog that is getting some attention on the net. Read about this here.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
And Now a Word from Our Sponsor
First of all, I want to apologize to my readers for the recent lack of posts. I have had no time to work on this lately for a mix of personal and work-related reasons. I work in politics, and this is prime time for us. It’s like working as a tax preparer the week leading up to April 15. You probably will not see posts in earnest as before until after this Tuesday.
This is a blog, not a diary, but I just wanted to say a few things. In today’s world, it’s easy to be overwhelmed. I know because I feel overwhelmed much of the time. We’re less than a week from an election that people on both sides seem to feel is of dire importance. I would say that the tension level of the average person is as high as I’ve seen it. We hear every day about people killing each other somewhere in the world, sometimes in our own cities. No matter if you’re candidate’s ten points up or ten points down, sometimes things can just seem hopeless. I received an e-mail today, in 2008, going on at length about how all of our problems in America are caused by “negroes” and arguing that we should send them back to Africa. It urged me to “pass this on to everyone you know!” And, to top it all off, tomorrow’s Halloween, and everyone I know is so busy preparing for the election on Tuesday that I have no plans. For the first time in my life, I don’t have a Halloween costume this year. So all in all, things seem pretty depressing.
What’s difficult to remember in all this is that we are here, on a planet full of dazzling love and beauty. Today when I walked to the bus stop, it was bitingly cold and the grass had all turned white overnight. The sky in the East was laced with lines of pink, a tone poem of color. And, as I walked, I watched flock after flock of birds fly out of the sunrise and over my head. They were huge, dense masses, with hundreds of birds packed tightly together. I’m not sure what species they were… they were very small, and beat their wings hard. And the last flock was the biggest. It stretched all the way across the sky from north to south. I watched it with my mouth open and my neck craned upward, until a car honked at me and I realized that the light had changed and I could cross the street.
And the greatest thing is, you never know when moments like that are going to come. I’ve found that when things look bleakest, the rays of sunshine stand out even more. Pleasant conversations with total strangers that you think about for hours afterward. An engrossing chapter of a book. A compliment from a friend. I think that there’s something in all this. I’m not a messiah or a great philosopher, and couldn’t tell you what, but we have to hold onto that something through everything else.
And, hey, if you’re a Phillies fan, and I know a few, you don’t need any of this. It can be easy to be jealous of someone else’s happiness, but sometimes it’s also good to get swept up in pure jubilation, whatever the source. A grown man running in from left field, jumping for joy like a little boy at accomplishing the dream of his life. We are here in a world where that happens every day, somewhere.
As a dying Rowena Allister might sternly order, “You… flowers.” “Watchers” fans will get that… I think they’re most of our readership, anyway. Anyway, I’ll see you all soon. Happy Halloween!
This is a blog, not a diary, but I just wanted to say a few things. In today’s world, it’s easy to be overwhelmed. I know because I feel overwhelmed much of the time. We’re less than a week from an election that people on both sides seem to feel is of dire importance. I would say that the tension level of the average person is as high as I’ve seen it. We hear every day about people killing each other somewhere in the world, sometimes in our own cities. No matter if you’re candidate’s ten points up or ten points down, sometimes things can just seem hopeless. I received an e-mail today, in 2008, going on at length about how all of our problems in America are caused by “negroes” and arguing that we should send them back to Africa. It urged me to “pass this on to everyone you know!” And, to top it all off, tomorrow’s Halloween, and everyone I know is so busy preparing for the election on Tuesday that I have no plans. For the first time in my life, I don’t have a Halloween costume this year. So all in all, things seem pretty depressing.
What’s difficult to remember in all this is that we are here, on a planet full of dazzling love and beauty. Today when I walked to the bus stop, it was bitingly cold and the grass had all turned white overnight. The sky in the East was laced with lines of pink, a tone poem of color. And, as I walked, I watched flock after flock of birds fly out of the sunrise and over my head. They were huge, dense masses, with hundreds of birds packed tightly together. I’m not sure what species they were… they were very small, and beat their wings hard. And the last flock was the biggest. It stretched all the way across the sky from north to south. I watched it with my mouth open and my neck craned upward, until a car honked at me and I realized that the light had changed and I could cross the street.
And the greatest thing is, you never know when moments like that are going to come. I’ve found that when things look bleakest, the rays of sunshine stand out even more. Pleasant conversations with total strangers that you think about for hours afterward. An engrossing chapter of a book. A compliment from a friend. I think that there’s something in all this. I’m not a messiah or a great philosopher, and couldn’t tell you what, but we have to hold onto that something through everything else.
And, hey, if you’re a Phillies fan, and I know a few, you don’t need any of this. It can be easy to be jealous of someone else’s happiness, but sometimes it’s also good to get swept up in pure jubilation, whatever the source. A grown man running in from left field, jumping for joy like a little boy at accomplishing the dream of his life. We are here in a world where that happens every day, somewhere.
As a dying Rowena Allister might sternly order, “You… flowers.” “Watchers” fans will get that… I think they’re most of our readership, anyway. Anyway, I’ll see you all soon. Happy Halloween!
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Is Voter Fraud "Undermining the Fabric of our Democracy?"
In the last debate, Sen. John McCain's answer appears to have been yes. Republicans are up in arms over what they say is the potential for widespread "voter fraud," most evidenced by the activities of ACORN. The ACORN acronym has been thrown around in this election nearly as much as the name of Bill Ayers, but I doubt most Americans have taken the time to really find out what's going on. In truth, voter fraud is extremely rare in this country these days. What ACORN committed was voter registration fraud, which sounds the same but is extremely different in degree.
When Republicans say "voter fraud," they seem to be referring to some of the old-style techniques commonly thought to have been employed by the old political machines. Tammany Hall, the rulers of 1800s New York, used to take drunks off the street, dress them up nicely, and take them around from polling place to polling place, gradually changing their appearance as they went. This was before photo ID. You'll also often hear that President Kennedy beat Richard Nixon in 1960 because the Daley machine in Chicago counted votes from dead people. This is probably false, though it seems to have permanently entered American political lore (when Republicans accuse Obama of being a "Chicago politician," people are supposed to remember this). The key in both of these scenarios is that they involve people actually voting when they aren't supposed to.
ACORN stands for the American Community Organizations for Reform Now (Yes, Rudy, community organizers). It was founded in 1970 and since then has been an advocate and lobbying group for poor Americans. One of its many objectives is to register as many of the poor as possible to vote. In this particular election, what has come to light is that ACORN tried to accomplish two things at once by paying low-income individuals to register other low-income individuals. Unfortunately, in order to meet their quotas, some of these workers seem to have simply made up names and filled out the forms for those imaginary people. Some of these were extremely obvious frauds, such as "Batman" or "Tony Romo".
Now, this is of course illegal. ACORN immediately admitted that they had no good way of filtering out all of the fakes, since they're not the government, but also refused to simply throw out all the applications. So some fakes probably slipped through the cracks and actually ended up registered. But here's the thing: for this fraud to even start having an effect on the election, the fake people have to actually show up and vote. They have to show ID. Now, you can certainly fake an ID (just ask any 19-year-old college student), but for such a fraud to be widespread and organized, as the Republicans seem to suggest, there would have to be legions of people with valid fake IDs in the same identities that were registered. Since the fake names were blatantly made up by independent workers, this is not going to happen. A conspiracy in this manner would just not be practical.
In other words, in order for Batman being registered to really be a problem, Batman would have to actually show up and try to vote. One incident that happened in Illinois has gotten a lot of play in the media, where registration info was mailed to a dead pet goldfish. Illinois Republicans immediately claimed fraud. Not only would the fish have to actually appear and vote for this to be an issue, it wasn't registered in the first place... it was only sent information on how to register.
So really, Republican claims of fraud in this instance are just that... a fraud. They are an attempt to a) link Barack Obama to something that sounds like corruption, in the absence of actual corruption to link him to, and b) lay the groundwork for a possible challenge to the electoral results if necessary. Now, at the moment Obama seems to have a big lead in the polls, but if that tightens by election day, and I have little doubt that it will, we may see a long, drawn-out fight that Republicans have been preparing for some time now.
When Republicans say "voter fraud," they seem to be referring to some of the old-style techniques commonly thought to have been employed by the old political machines. Tammany Hall, the rulers of 1800s New York, used to take drunks off the street, dress them up nicely, and take them around from polling place to polling place, gradually changing their appearance as they went. This was before photo ID. You'll also often hear that President Kennedy beat Richard Nixon in 1960 because the Daley machine in Chicago counted votes from dead people. This is probably false, though it seems to have permanently entered American political lore (when Republicans accuse Obama of being a "Chicago politician," people are supposed to remember this). The key in both of these scenarios is that they involve people actually voting when they aren't supposed to.
ACORN stands for the American Community Organizations for Reform Now (Yes, Rudy, community organizers). It was founded in 1970 and since then has been an advocate and lobbying group for poor Americans. One of its many objectives is to register as many of the poor as possible to vote. In this particular election, what has come to light is that ACORN tried to accomplish two things at once by paying low-income individuals to register other low-income individuals. Unfortunately, in order to meet their quotas, some of these workers seem to have simply made up names and filled out the forms for those imaginary people. Some of these were extremely obvious frauds, such as "Batman" or "Tony Romo".
Now, this is of course illegal. ACORN immediately admitted that they had no good way of filtering out all of the fakes, since they're not the government, but also refused to simply throw out all the applications. So some fakes probably slipped through the cracks and actually ended up registered. But here's the thing: for this fraud to even start having an effect on the election, the fake people have to actually show up and vote. They have to show ID. Now, you can certainly fake an ID (just ask any 19-year-old college student), but for such a fraud to be widespread and organized, as the Republicans seem to suggest, there would have to be legions of people with valid fake IDs in the same identities that were registered. Since the fake names were blatantly made up by independent workers, this is not going to happen. A conspiracy in this manner would just not be practical.
In other words, in order for Batman being registered to really be a problem, Batman would have to actually show up and try to vote. One incident that happened in Illinois has gotten a lot of play in the media, where registration info was mailed to a dead pet goldfish. Illinois Republicans immediately claimed fraud. Not only would the fish have to actually appear and vote for this to be an issue, it wasn't registered in the first place... it was only sent information on how to register.
So really, Republican claims of fraud in this instance are just that... a fraud. They are an attempt to a) link Barack Obama to something that sounds like corruption, in the absence of actual corruption to link him to, and b) lay the groundwork for a possible challenge to the electoral results if necessary. Now, at the moment Obama seems to have a big lead in the polls, but if that tightens by election day, and I have little doubt that it will, we may see a long, drawn-out fight that Republicans have been preparing for some time now.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Bits: Wildflower Decapitation Edition
Awesome.-A video from a random episode of the old Batman series has been making the rounds of the YouTubes because it appears to offer commentary on the 2008 election... 40 years in advance. There are several parallels that can be seen in this clip alone, which features Batman and the Penguin engaging in a debate prior to an election for Mayor of Gotham City. Of course, this campaign has become such a caricature of itself that it's no wonder it reminds people of a campy 60s TV series.
-Unsettlingly, anecdotal evidence increasingly suggests that early voting sites across the country are being targeted by angry protestors, specifically anti-Obama protestors. This article describes an incident in North Carolina, and features video. So... you're protesting voting? Why not protest Obama by going into the early voting place and voting against him? And I especially like the comment that "Sundays are for church, not for voting"... by the person who's spending her Sunday protesting instead of in church.
-All over the news today... the discovery on the Arizona/Utah border (within Vermillion Cliffs National Monument) of what is being termed a "Dinosaur Dance Floor." How did it get this name? To quote Newswise.com:
“Get out there and try stepping in their footsteps, and you feel like you areThe find apparently includes thousands of dinosaur tracks in a very small area, in some places a dozen per square yard. There are least four different species represented. The scientists are theorizing that the tracks were formed at an oasis in what that time was a huge area of sand dunes, larger than today's Sahara. I have to throw in one more quote here:
playing the game ‘Dance Dance Revolution’ that teenagers dance on,” says
Marjorie Chan, professor and chair of geology and geophysics at the University
of Utah. “This kind of reminded me of that – a dinosaur dance floor – because
there are so many tracks and a variety of different tracks.”
Seiler envisions the dinosaurs were “happy to be at this place, having wanderedAh, yes, poetical scientists.
up and down many a sand dune, exhausted from the heat and the blowing sand,
relieved and happy to come to a place where there was water.”
-Rather interesting news from Switzerland today, a nation always on the cutting edge when it comes to government. A new law bans the humiliation of plants. Recently, the Swiss Parliament asked a special committee of philosophers, lawyers, geneticists, and theologians to determine the meaning of dignity as it pertains to plants. They have issued their report, which says that it is morally wrong to participate in "the decapitation of wildflowers at the roadside without rational reason", and it appears that parliament is acting on those guidelines. However, one wonders what the actual extent and/or enforceability of such a law would be. More here.
-Free TV On the Internet: Check out this past week's new Family Guy episode, "The Road to Germany". It's already infamous because it has Nazis wearing McCain/Palin buttons, which seems like an unlikely thing to have fixated upon in an episode that revolves around a port-a-potty time machine (which I suppose makes as much sense as a phone box) and a baby dressing up as Hitler.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Breaking Sports News: World Series Is Set
The Tampa Bay Rays, who as recently as last year might have won a poll for lowliest franchise in Major League Baseball, advanced to their first World Series last night after a great tension-filled ALCS Game 7 that ended in a 3-1 Rays victory over the defending champion Boston Red Sox. The Rays set a record for most home runs in a playoff series with sixteen, and excelled in pretty much every aspect of the game. Still, it took everything they had to overcome the vaunted Red Sox, who going into last night had won their last nine ALCS elimination games.
So the World Series will start in, where else, St. Petersburg, Florida on Wednesday night. It will pit the Rays against the Philadelphia Phillies, who breezed through the National League side of the playoffs relatively quietly against some good teams. The Phillies (favorite team of several official Walrus File relatives), have won exactly one world series in their history, in 1980, though they were in the playoffs last year and were among the favorites to open the year. While baseball traditionally doesn't see too much turnover at the top (especially compared to, say, football), there are a few recent series that invite comparison, including 1997's epic clash between the Indians (who hadn't won a championship since 1948) and the Marlins (in their first Series), as well as 2005's sweep by the White Sox (who won their first title since 1917) over the Astros (in their first Series).
FOX is apparently fearful of possible low ratings due to neither of these teams being among the game's traditional elite, but hardcore baseball fans seem to be eagerly anticipating the match-up. The Rays emerged this year with young talent at nearly every position, led by everyone's Rookie of the Year, third baseman Evan Longoria, who homered in four straight games of the ALCS, as well as exciting center fielder B.J. Upton., slugger Carlos Pena, all-star catcher Dioner Navarro, speedy left fielder Carl Crawford, and others. The pitching staff went from being historically bad last year to one of the league's best this year, with starters Scott Kazmir, Scott Shields, and unlikely ALCS MVP Matt Garza, as well as a bullpen that can comfortably go seven men deep and may herald the beginning of the post-closer era in baseball.
The Phillies, meanwhile, are led by a handful of superstars bigger than anybody on the Tampa Bay roster. Ryan Howard, a gentle giant of a first baseman, led the Majors in homers this year. Jimmy Rollins provides as big a spark as anyone in the game in the lead-off spot and is the team's unchallenged leader. He won last season's MVP award after the Phillies' furious comeback caught the collapsing New York Mets for the NL East title on the last day of the season. Their pitching staff is led by ace Cole Hamels, who won the NLCS MVP award and has been unhittable in the playoffs so far, and closer Brad Lidge, who went an unbelievable 41 for 41 in save opportunities this year. It should be an interesting contrast in styles between the two teams, and I doubt we'll see a short series.
In any case, it should be great viewing. If you're only a casual baseball fan who hasn't been paying the closest attention, now is a great chance to see some great games between two teams you may not have heard as much about in a season where the Yankees (who missed the playoffs for the first time since 1993), Red Sox, Mets, Cubs, Dodgers, and even the Milwaukee Brewers dominated the headlines for much of the year. ESPN has wasted no time in comparing this season's Rays club to the 1969 Amazin' Mets, who similarly came out of nowhere to establish their franchise on the national scene with a Championship. Can they seal the deal?
So the World Series will start in, where else, St. Petersburg, Florida on Wednesday night. It will pit the Rays against the Philadelphia Phillies, who breezed through the National League side of the playoffs relatively quietly against some good teams. The Phillies (favorite team of several official Walrus File relatives), have won exactly one world series in their history, in 1980, though they were in the playoffs last year and were among the favorites to open the year. While baseball traditionally doesn't see too much turnover at the top (especially compared to, say, football), there are a few recent series that invite comparison, including 1997's epic clash between the Indians (who hadn't won a championship since 1948) and the Marlins (in their first Series), as well as 2005's sweep by the White Sox (who won their first title since 1917) over the Astros (in their first Series).
FOX is apparently fearful of possible low ratings due to neither of these teams being among the game's traditional elite, but hardcore baseball fans seem to be eagerly anticipating the match-up. The Rays emerged this year with young talent at nearly every position, led by everyone's Rookie of the Year, third baseman Evan Longoria, who homered in four straight games of the ALCS, as well as exciting center fielder B.J. Upton., slugger Carlos Pena, all-star catcher Dioner Navarro, speedy left fielder Carl Crawford, and others. The pitching staff went from being historically bad last year to one of the league's best this year, with starters Scott Kazmir, Scott Shields, and unlikely ALCS MVP Matt Garza, as well as a bullpen that can comfortably go seven men deep and may herald the beginning of the post-closer era in baseball.
The Phillies, meanwhile, are led by a handful of superstars bigger than anybody on the Tampa Bay roster. Ryan Howard, a gentle giant of a first baseman, led the Majors in homers this year. Jimmy Rollins provides as big a spark as anyone in the game in the lead-off spot and is the team's unchallenged leader. He won last season's MVP award after the Phillies' furious comeback caught the collapsing New York Mets for the NL East title on the last day of the season. Their pitching staff is led by ace Cole Hamels, who won the NLCS MVP award and has been unhittable in the playoffs so far, and closer Brad Lidge, who went an unbelievable 41 for 41 in save opportunities this year. It should be an interesting contrast in styles between the two teams, and I doubt we'll see a short series.
In any case, it should be great viewing. If you're only a casual baseball fan who hasn't been paying the closest attention, now is a great chance to see some great games between two teams you may not have heard as much about in a season where the Yankees (who missed the playoffs for the first time since 1993), Red Sox, Mets, Cubs, Dodgers, and even the Milwaukee Brewers dominated the headlines for much of the year. ESPN has wasted no time in comparing this season's Rays club to the 1969 Amazin' Mets, who similarly came out of nowhere to establish their franchise on the national scene with a Championship. Can they seal the deal?
Sunday, October 19, 2008
TechWatch: "Buckypaper"
It has the potential to be 100 times stronger than steel, but ten times later. The AP ran a story today on a new discovery called "buckypaper" that is being developed by researchers at Florida State University. It looks like normal carbon paper, but is actually made of "carbon nanotubes." These are tube-shaped carbon molecules that, when pressed together into a composite, form an incredibly strong bond. And unlike other composite materials, buckypaper conducts electricity extremely well. The aerospace industry in particular views this technology as potentially its saving grace. In the meantime, this may be the first "nanotech" product to go mainstream, as researchers say that they may be making products in a year or so. If you've read any recent science fiction, you're aware of the potential technological revolution this may precede. Nanotechnology is the use of tiny machines to perform tasks, with the creation of ultra-strong materials only one application.
Positives: If we can create a material with the properties and strength of metal but much lighter, the potential uses are myriad to say the least. I mentioned the aerospace industry. If the plane is ten times lighter, think of the fuel savings. Fuel costs are what's really killing that industry right now. The same can probably be said of automobiles, which could not only save fuel but be made much safer. Buckypaper could also be used very soon to create more efficient electrodes for batteries and those newfangled fuel cells, as well as more durable heat shielding for computers. In the long term, the substance could theoretically be used for almost anything.
Negatives: Well, there's a theory going around that it could cause cancer a la asbestos, which would be, y'know, bad. Also, many people are afraid that nanotechnology could cause the end of the world, via the so-called "Gray Goo" theory. This is nothing that could trigger that scenario, but it's a step in the direction. Michael Crichton even wrote a novel about it. In the non-end-of-the-world sector, there are still some kinks to work out, though scientists are confident they'll be able to.
Will It Catch On?: Probably, though it's tough to tell at this point. Definitely not if the cancer business turns out to be true. The fact that this already has heavy backing from Lockheed Martin makes its appearance on the scene more likely.
A note on the name: It's called "buckypaper" because the carbon nanotubes are based on the recently discovered carbon molecule "buckminsterfullerene," which is in-turn named after the scientist, architect, visonary, etc. Buckminster Fuller.
Positives: If we can create a material with the properties and strength of metal but much lighter, the potential uses are myriad to say the least. I mentioned the aerospace industry. If the plane is ten times lighter, think of the fuel savings. Fuel costs are what's really killing that industry right now. The same can probably be said of automobiles, which could not only save fuel but be made much safer. Buckypaper could also be used very soon to create more efficient electrodes for batteries and those newfangled fuel cells, as well as more durable heat shielding for computers. In the long term, the substance could theoretically be used for almost anything.
Negatives: Well, there's a theory going around that it could cause cancer a la asbestos, which would be, y'know, bad. Also, many people are afraid that nanotechnology could cause the end of the world, via the so-called "Gray Goo" theory. This is nothing that could trigger that scenario, but it's a step in the direction. Michael Crichton even wrote a novel about it. In the non-end-of-the-world sector, there are still some kinks to work out, though scientists are confident they'll be able to.
Will It Catch On?: Probably, though it's tough to tell at this point. Definitely not if the cancer business turns out to be true. The fact that this already has heavy backing from Lockheed Martin makes its appearance on the scene more likely.
A note on the name: It's called "buckypaper" because the carbon nanotubes are based on the recently discovered carbon molecule "buckminsterfullerene," which is in-turn named after the scientist, architect, visonary, etc. Buckminster Fuller.
Bits: Epic Fail Edition
-MemeWatch is spreading! I was seriously considering doing an installment of our favorite feature about the sudden mainstream acceptance of the netspeak "Fail." But Slate beat me to the punch, with this great article.
-Former Bush Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama this morning on NBC's Meet the Press. If nothing else, this should help Obama win the news cycle and allow him to continue to keep his lead.
-McCain spokeswoman Nancy Pfotenhauer stood by remarks this week that McCain is winning in the "real Virginia." Apparently this means the more southern parts of Virginia that aren't suburbs of Washington D.C. I'm sure this will help them win over voters in Falls Church and Arlington.
-This comes after Gov. Sarah Palin, while campaigning in Greensboro, North Carolina this week, saying she enjoyed coming to "pro-american parts of the country." Of course, Barack Obama's campaign immediately began asking "so, which parts of the country are anti-american?" And the Republicans have run into a problem trying to make talking points out of this stuff. Rep. Michele Bachmann caused a stir when she attempted to defend Palin on MSNBC's Hardball and ended up calling for an investigation into which members of Congress were "unamerican." McCarthy, anybody? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/17/gop-rep-channels-mccarthy_n_135735.html
-In more positive(?) Sarah Palin news, she appeared last night on Saturday Night Live and didn't really do much. Most thought this would put the spotlight on Tina Fey's Palin impersonation, but it was Fey's sometime partner-in-crime, the very pregnant Amy Poehler, who stole the show during Gov. Palin's appearance on the "Weekend Update" segment. Check this out: http://www.hulu.com/watch/39808/saturday-night-live-update-palin-rap
-Today's Free TV on the Internet: You read my review of the Crusoe pilot, "Rum and Gunpowder." Now watch it for yourself: http://www.hulu.com/watch/39786/crusoe-rum-and-gunpowder
-Former Bush Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama this morning on NBC's Meet the Press. If nothing else, this should help Obama win the news cycle and allow him to continue to keep his lead.
-McCain spokeswoman Nancy Pfotenhauer stood by remarks this week that McCain is winning in the "real Virginia." Apparently this means the more southern parts of Virginia that aren't suburbs of Washington D.C. I'm sure this will help them win over voters in Falls Church and Arlington.
-This comes after Gov. Sarah Palin, while campaigning in Greensboro, North Carolina this week, saying she enjoyed coming to "pro-american parts of the country." Of course, Barack Obama's campaign immediately began asking "so, which parts of the country are anti-american?" And the Republicans have run into a problem trying to make talking points out of this stuff. Rep. Michele Bachmann caused a stir when she attempted to defend Palin on MSNBC's Hardball and ended up calling for an investigation into which members of Congress were "unamerican." McCarthy, anybody? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/17/gop-rep-channels-mccarthy_n_135735.html
-In more positive(?) Sarah Palin news, she appeared last night on Saturday Night Live and didn't really do much. Most thought this would put the spotlight on Tina Fey's Palin impersonation, but it was Fey's sometime partner-in-crime, the very pregnant Amy Poehler, who stole the show during Gov. Palin's appearance on the "Weekend Update" segment. Check this out: http://www.hulu.com/watch/39808/saturday-night-live-update-palin-rap
-Today's Free TV on the Internet: You read my review of the Crusoe pilot, "Rum and Gunpowder." Now watch it for yourself: http://www.hulu.com/watch/39786/crusoe-rum-and-gunpowder
Saturday, October 18, 2008
TV Is Back: My Own Worst Enemy & Crusoe
Oh, NBC, there was a time when you were the most exciting channel on TV. That's still true to a certain extent. You have "30 Rock," and "The Office," which are far and away TV's two best live-action comedies. You have "Heroes," for whatever it's worth (given the current popularity of super heroes, imagine how many people would watch it if it was GOOD), and "Chuck," which is still so much fun, even if no one's really watching. You have "Saturday Night Live," which isn't as biting as "The Daily Show" these days but has its own loopy place (McCain: "Sen. Obama, my invisible friend Simon can't be appointed to the Cabinet. He's a Unicorn. I think you know that.").
But now you've put out an entire new slate of shows, and every single one of them's a dud, without exception. "Knight Rider" is incredibly awful, and I ended up watching most of the last ten minutes of "Kath & Kim" the other night against my will and there wasn't a single laugh in that entire time. This week came the debuts of "My Own Worst Enemy" and "Crusoe".
"My Own Worst Enemy" is, as a concept, about identity. It's billed as a sort of modern-day Jekyll & Hyde story mixed with James Bond. That probably sounds good to you, but the show simply fails to deliver. Its biggest problem is that it's hard to tell its Jekyll from its Hyde. This is a show whose fundamental premise is that two distinct personalities share one body, that of (very) poor-man's Tom Cruise, Christian Slater. One is supposed to be a cool, dark secret agent who can kill people with his feet, and the other is a normal guy who works in an office. But we're not left thinking the two of them are that different, which is fatal.
The first problem is that Slater is horribly miscast. Some actors could have a field day with dual role. Slater is definitely not one of them. As a secret agent he's stoic, and as a regular guy he's... pretty stoic, actually. He's not really capable of anything else. When he figures out he's two different people, he seems mildly perturbed. Then there's the other issue, which is that the normal guy's life is actual a very Hollywood version of a normal guy's life, which makes it almost as glamorous as secret agent guy's. Secret Agent Guy sleeps with hot women, Normal Guy sleeps with his hot wife. Secret Agent Guy drives a cool new sports car. Normal Guy drives... a cool new car given to us by our friends in the product placement department. Secret Agent Guy hangs out in spectacular hotel rooms. Normal Guy hangs out in... a spectacularly large, nice house.
I am normally good with suspension of disbelief. You want me to believe that we're on the rings of Saturn fighting the aliens with laser beams coming from the eyes of the space whale we're riding, I'm good with that. But I need the actions of characters and groups within the story to make sense. The explanation of why our Secret Agency would go through all the trouble of creating Double Personality Action Christian Slater isn't really there here. And without any basis in reality, we're left with nothing but Christian Slater failing to give us two separate people.
On to "Crusoe," which was probably the best of the NBC bunch so far, though that's saying oh so little. The pilot gives us Sam Neill and Sean Bean, but both are in flashbacky guest roles. The star is supposed to be one Philip Winchester, who spends most of the opening episode showing us his chest muscles, which are certainly impressive. He has his sidekick Friday (Tongai Chirisa), who is a lot like Crusoe, in that he seems to be good at everything and also has nice chest muscles. In any case, I was mildly entertained for about 45 minutes. I soon discovered to my horror that the opening episode was actually two hours long. The plot involved pirates who happen to wash up on shore, many of them ending up killed by Crusoe himself (which I think we're supposed to think is funny), except for the hot sword-fighting chick.
These guys come off as the "Pirates of the Caribbean" understudy company, and that's the whole point of the show. I wondered when the schedules came out where the idea for a Robinson Crusoe series could have come from. Surely it wasn't an extremely late attempt to rip off "Lost"? Thankfully, that's not the case. Just as the original "Battlestar Galactica" was a blatant attempt to capitalize on the "Star Wars" phenomenon, "Crusoe" is a blatant attempt to capitalize on "Pirates." I suppose you can't blame them for trying, though it's so blatant we're left thinking about that rather than the what's going on on-screen.
Neither Crusoe nor Friday end up as much of a character. They're just sort of good at everything. Robinson seems to have some ability with ropes and pullies and inventions. He has a contraption that squeezes five lemons at once. Because you need to do that all the time. He has a bridge over pirahna infested water (go to the NBC website to learn how to build your own!) that consists of a very strange wheel mechanism and a complex series of ropes. I was left wondering why he didn't just build a regular rope bridge. As scruffy pirate guy says, "Seems like you've had too much time your hands."
The series is also pretty much robbed of any sense of reality by its crappy production values that reminded me of nothing more than a Halmi miniseries, or maybe "Hercules"/"Xena" type syndicated shows (which, I was not surprised to find, Halmi was also involved with). So what we end up with is a sort of stilted stageplay on a tropical island that plays like kids making up a story based on all the crappy movies they've seen lately while wearing halloween costumes. It's only really worth sitting through if they're your kids, chest muscles not withstanding.
But now you've put out an entire new slate of shows, and every single one of them's a dud, without exception. "Knight Rider" is incredibly awful, and I ended up watching most of the last ten minutes of "Kath & Kim" the other night against my will and there wasn't a single laugh in that entire time. This week came the debuts of "My Own Worst Enemy" and "Crusoe".
"My Own Worst Enemy" is, as a concept, about identity. It's billed as a sort of modern-day Jekyll & Hyde story mixed with James Bond. That probably sounds good to you, but the show simply fails to deliver. Its biggest problem is that it's hard to tell its Jekyll from its Hyde. This is a show whose fundamental premise is that two distinct personalities share one body, that of (very) poor-man's Tom Cruise, Christian Slater. One is supposed to be a cool, dark secret agent who can kill people with his feet, and the other is a normal guy who works in an office. But we're not left thinking the two of them are that different, which is fatal.
The first problem is that Slater is horribly miscast. Some actors could have a field day with dual role. Slater is definitely not one of them. As a secret agent he's stoic, and as a regular guy he's... pretty stoic, actually. He's not really capable of anything else. When he figures out he's two different people, he seems mildly perturbed. Then there's the other issue, which is that the normal guy's life is actual a very Hollywood version of a normal guy's life, which makes it almost as glamorous as secret agent guy's. Secret Agent Guy sleeps with hot women, Normal Guy sleeps with his hot wife. Secret Agent Guy drives a cool new sports car. Normal Guy drives... a cool new car given to us by our friends in the product placement department. Secret Agent Guy hangs out in spectacular hotel rooms. Normal Guy hangs out in... a spectacularly large, nice house.
I am normally good with suspension of disbelief. You want me to believe that we're on the rings of Saturn fighting the aliens with laser beams coming from the eyes of the space whale we're riding, I'm good with that. But I need the actions of characters and groups within the story to make sense. The explanation of why our Secret Agency would go through all the trouble of creating Double Personality Action Christian Slater isn't really there here. And without any basis in reality, we're left with nothing but Christian Slater failing to give us two separate people.
On to "Crusoe," which was probably the best of the NBC bunch so far, though that's saying oh so little. The pilot gives us Sam Neill and Sean Bean, but both are in flashbacky guest roles. The star is supposed to be one Philip Winchester, who spends most of the opening episode showing us his chest muscles, which are certainly impressive. He has his sidekick Friday (Tongai Chirisa), who is a lot like Crusoe, in that he seems to be good at everything and also has nice chest muscles. In any case, I was mildly entertained for about 45 minutes. I soon discovered to my horror that the opening episode was actually two hours long. The plot involved pirates who happen to wash up on shore, many of them ending up killed by Crusoe himself (which I think we're supposed to think is funny), except for the hot sword-fighting chick.
These guys come off as the "Pirates of the Caribbean" understudy company, and that's the whole point of the show. I wondered when the schedules came out where the idea for a Robinson Crusoe series could have come from. Surely it wasn't an extremely late attempt to rip off "Lost"? Thankfully, that's not the case. Just as the original "Battlestar Galactica" was a blatant attempt to capitalize on the "Star Wars" phenomenon, "Crusoe" is a blatant attempt to capitalize on "Pirates." I suppose you can't blame them for trying, though it's so blatant we're left thinking about that rather than the what's going on on-screen.
Neither Crusoe nor Friday end up as much of a character. They're just sort of good at everything. Robinson seems to have some ability with ropes and pullies and inventions. He has a contraption that squeezes five lemons at once. Because you need to do that all the time. He has a bridge over pirahna infested water (go to the NBC website to learn how to build your own!) that consists of a very strange wheel mechanism and a complex series of ropes. I was left wondering why he didn't just build a regular rope bridge. As scruffy pirate guy says, "Seems like you've had too much time your hands."
The series is also pretty much robbed of any sense of reality by its crappy production values that reminded me of nothing more than a Halmi miniseries, or maybe "Hercules"/"Xena" type syndicated shows (which, I was not surprised to find, Halmi was also involved with). So what we end up with is a sort of stilted stageplay on a tropical island that plays like kids making up a story based on all the crappy movies they've seen lately while wearing halloween costumes. It's only really worth sitting through if they're your kids, chest muscles not withstanding.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Presidential Smackdown III: The Final Battle
The third Presidential Debate just finished at Hofstra University on Long Island. It was the most combative and personal of the debates, and I think certainly the best debate and the one most useful to the voter. Someone with a moderate level of skepticism and/or media literacy could gain from this debate a basic grasp of the contrast between the two candidates on a variety of issues, including energy policy, tax policy, trade policy, health care... the real substantive issues. There was also a long exchange about "negative campaigning," in which the debate moderator, CBS anchor Bob Schieffer, asked them if either of them would make the accusations they'd been making on the trail to each other's faces, something that has bothered me throughout and earned Schieffer my biggest cheer of the night.
The candidate story seemed to be that McCain was either "combative" or "feisty," depending on your point of view, and Obama was mostly playing defense, with a few very clear explanations on issues I hadn't heard from him on that I enjoyed but I'm not sure will go over soundbyte-conscious pundits. McCain's supporters have been asking him to really take it to Obama, and he did. (ACORN is fundamentally undermining American democracy? Really? But that's another post...) However, I think it might be a mistake for McCain to dial up the anger. He's been falling farther and farther behind the more angry he seems. He doesn't wear it well. So he's placed in the bad position of having to attack to make up ground but not coming off well when he attacks. Obama was cool and collected, and McCain was attacking and sometimes not very coherent.
Even MSNBC thinks McCain may have "won on points," and it's entirely possible he had good arguments. You'll notice here I'm talking about his presentation. It got to the point sometimes that I didn't know what he was getting at. He brought up "Joe the Plumber" at least 20 times (CNN was counting), and I'm not sure what he was getting at. We'll see if that resonated with people who, y'know, aren't me. But I want to go back to the presentation, because I think the policy speaks for itself and you can make your own decisions. More than pretty much any other debate I've ever seen, this debate was in split-screen. McCain seemed angry when Obama criticized him. Obama smiled and shook his head when McCain criticized him. That is a big difference.
People will remember the section on "negative campaigning." McCain spent a long time harping on Rep. John Lewis' recent comments, basically demanding an apology from Obama which he didn't get. Obama actually brought up the McCain supporters literally calling for his head, which surprised me, and McCain's response was basically, as far as I could tell, that some of his supporters were veterans. I think McCain didn't do himself favors in this section, despite the extremely vocal demands of his supporters.
So this is the last debate. If you're still undecided... who are you? Are you living under a rock? Or maybe you're like my dad, who spends weeks shopping around for the simplest items. The vote's in 19 days.
The candidate story seemed to be that McCain was either "combative" or "feisty," depending on your point of view, and Obama was mostly playing defense, with a few very clear explanations on issues I hadn't heard from him on that I enjoyed but I'm not sure will go over soundbyte-conscious pundits. McCain's supporters have been asking him to really take it to Obama, and he did. (ACORN is fundamentally undermining American democracy? Really? But that's another post...) However, I think it might be a mistake for McCain to dial up the anger. He's been falling farther and farther behind the more angry he seems. He doesn't wear it well. So he's placed in the bad position of having to attack to make up ground but not coming off well when he attacks. Obama was cool and collected, and McCain was attacking and sometimes not very coherent.
Even MSNBC thinks McCain may have "won on points," and it's entirely possible he had good arguments. You'll notice here I'm talking about his presentation. It got to the point sometimes that I didn't know what he was getting at. He brought up "Joe the Plumber" at least 20 times (CNN was counting), and I'm not sure what he was getting at. We'll see if that resonated with people who, y'know, aren't me. But I want to go back to the presentation, because I think the policy speaks for itself and you can make your own decisions. More than pretty much any other debate I've ever seen, this debate was in split-screen. McCain seemed angry when Obama criticized him. Obama smiled and shook his head when McCain criticized him. That is a big difference.
People will remember the section on "negative campaigning." McCain spent a long time harping on Rep. John Lewis' recent comments, basically demanding an apology from Obama which he didn't get. Obama actually brought up the McCain supporters literally calling for his head, which surprised me, and McCain's response was basically, as far as I could tell, that some of his supporters were veterans. I think McCain didn't do himself favors in this section, despite the extremely vocal demands of his supporters.
So this is the last debate. If you're still undecided... who are you? Are you living under a rock? Or maybe you're like my dad, who spends weeks shopping around for the simplest items. The vote's in 19 days.
You Missed Election Day
...In Canada. Yes, the Canadians held an election yesterday, and it seems that not even they cared. It was the lowest recorded voter turnout in Canadian history, at 59% or so. It was an election without many major issues. Polls put the economy at number one, but the worst of the global crisis has mostly passed over Canada, due to tight regulations already in place for the nation's financial industry. In the end, the Conservative Party gained seats but not enough for a clean majority, with a total of 143 Stephen Harper, extremely popular in Canada, will remain the nation's Prime Minister. The once-mighty Liberal Party lost substantially once again, being reduced to only 76 seats. There are also two other major parties, the separatist Bloc Quebecois, which stayed about the same with 50 seats, and the ultra-liberal New Democrats, who continued to gain strength and now have 38 seats.
The Liberal Party governed for 12 consecutive years (1993-2006), mostly under Jean Chretien, but in recent years have been hit by the so-called "Sponsorship Scandal", revolving around corruption and political favors among party members in Quebec. Also, during the 90s, the Canadian Right was split following the near-total collapse of the "Progressive Conservatives" in 1993, when that party went from the majority to having only 2 seats, and the far-right "Reform Party" emerged but was mainly limited to the western part of the country. The Reform Party was extremely controversial in Canada for its advocacy of positions associated with the modern American Republican party. It was openly Christian, anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, and also wanted to end the Canadian policy of bilingualism. Following a few unsucessful attempts at reunification, the Reform Party, "Conservative Alliance," and the vestiges of the Progressive Conservatives merged in 2003 under the more-moderate Harper and in 2006 gained a plurality.
This was an election, as stated earlier, that really failed to get going. Stephane Dion, the Liberal leader, was painted, seemingly succesfully, by Conservatives as a weak leader, a sort of Canadian Dan Quayle, and it seems he will soon be replaced. Many criticized Conservative policies, such as a $45 million dollar arts funding cut (can you imagine how low that would be on an American election agenda?), as well as Harper's seeming to take a "wait-and-see" approach to the economy. There was also a business about them trying to bribe a dying independent with life insurance that never really caught on. Other parties, especially the Bloc and NDP, were quick to declare victory at the end of the night because the Conservatives didn't have the majority they wanted, while some criticized the election itself as a wase of money.
Other interesting bits surroundng the Canadian election:
-The Green Party made waves, increasing its national vote totals substantially to around 6%, but failed to win a single seat. By contrast, the Bloc Quebecois had 10% of the national vote, but will have 50 seats. Green Party leader Elizabeth May was seen by many as having had the strongest showing in the debates, but lost to Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay in her own Nova Scotia riding. Many felt the Green Party helped take seats away from the Liberals in this election, in addition to the usual NDP cut.
-One issue that cropped up was a 2003 speech by then-Opposition Leader Harper, in which he called for Canada to send troops to Iraq. It was recently revealed to have been directly plagiarized from a speech by Australian Prime Minister Howard that was delivered only two days earlier. The staffer who supposedly wrote the speech ended up having to resign. It's interesting to point out that, though Harper is in power, he has thought better of sending a Canadian contingent to Iraq, as such as move would certainly be wildly unpopular in Canada.
-Chris Reid, a Conservative candidate in a Toronto district, dropped out of the election after statements on his blog gained media attention. The statements? That he wanted to legalize concealed carrying of handguns. In Canada, that's apparently so far outside the mainstream as to end Reid's political career. Here in Ohio, by the way, "Conceal/Carry" is legal, with a permit. A lack of success in Toronto, where Conservatives hold zero seats out of 22, ended up being a major piece in that party's failure to win a majority.
-Then there's the case of NDP candidate Andrew McKeever from Durham, Ontario. I'll just quote Wikipedia:
-More NDP... Julian West, the party's candidate in Saanich, BC, dropped off the ballot after details surfaced regarding his conduct at an "environmental event" 12 years ago, where he went skinny-dipping and then asked two teenagers to bodypaint him. This may be the first bodypainting scandal I have heard of in world politics.
-Independent candidate David Popsecu, running in Sudbury, was invesitgated for "hate speech" after he responded to a debate question about gay rights with "homosexuals should be executed."
The Liberal Party governed for 12 consecutive years (1993-2006), mostly under Jean Chretien, but in recent years have been hit by the so-called "Sponsorship Scandal", revolving around corruption and political favors among party members in Quebec. Also, during the 90s, the Canadian Right was split following the near-total collapse of the "Progressive Conservatives" in 1993, when that party went from the majority to having only 2 seats, and the far-right "Reform Party" emerged but was mainly limited to the western part of the country. The Reform Party was extremely controversial in Canada for its advocacy of positions associated with the modern American Republican party. It was openly Christian, anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, and also wanted to end the Canadian policy of bilingualism. Following a few unsucessful attempts at reunification, the Reform Party, "Conservative Alliance," and the vestiges of the Progressive Conservatives merged in 2003 under the more-moderate Harper and in 2006 gained a plurality.
This was an election, as stated earlier, that really failed to get going. Stephane Dion, the Liberal leader, was painted, seemingly succesfully, by Conservatives as a weak leader, a sort of Canadian Dan Quayle, and it seems he will soon be replaced. Many criticized Conservative policies, such as a $45 million dollar arts funding cut (can you imagine how low that would be on an American election agenda?), as well as Harper's seeming to take a "wait-and-see" approach to the economy. There was also a business about them trying to bribe a dying independent with life insurance that never really caught on. Other parties, especially the Bloc and NDP, were quick to declare victory at the end of the night because the Conservatives didn't have the majority they wanted, while some criticized the election itself as a wase of money.
Other interesting bits surroundng the Canadian election:
-The Green Party made waves, increasing its national vote totals substantially to around 6%, but failed to win a single seat. By contrast, the Bloc Quebecois had 10% of the national vote, but will have 50 seats. Green Party leader Elizabeth May was seen by many as having had the strongest showing in the debates, but lost to Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay in her own Nova Scotia riding. Many felt the Green Party helped take seats away from the Liberals in this election, in addition to the usual NDP cut.
-One issue that cropped up was a 2003 speech by then-Opposition Leader Harper, in which he called for Canada to send troops to Iraq. It was recently revealed to have been directly plagiarized from a speech by Australian Prime Minister Howard that was delivered only two days earlier. The staffer who supposedly wrote the speech ended up having to resign. It's interesting to point out that, though Harper is in power, he has thought better of sending a Canadian contingent to Iraq, as such as move would certainly be wildly unpopular in Canada.
-Chris Reid, a Conservative candidate in a Toronto district, dropped out of the election after statements on his blog gained media attention. The statements? That he wanted to legalize concealed carrying of handguns. In Canada, that's apparently so far outside the mainstream as to end Reid's political career. Here in Ohio, by the way, "Conceal/Carry" is legal, with a permit. A lack of success in Toronto, where Conservatives hold zero seats out of 22, ended up being a major piece in that party's failure to win a majority.
-Then there's the case of NDP candidate Andrew McKeever from Durham, Ontario. I'll just quote Wikipedia:
announced on October 3 that he would resign from the election campaign after it
was revealed that he had posted comments on Facebook in which he called one
war activist a “fascist bitch” and threatened to beat up another person. Mr.
McKeever wrote comments peppered with expletives and calling the operators of a
war resister website “Nazis.” McKeever was also quoted as saying “I like the
part in Schindler’s List when the guard starts waxing the prisoners.” McKeever’s
decision to drop out of the race came with just over a week left in the
campaign, meaning his name would remain on the ballot. One week before the
publication of McKeever's resignation, NDP leader Jack Layton defended McKeever
and refused to make him step down.
-More NDP... Julian West, the party's candidate in Saanich, BC, dropped off the ballot after details surfaced regarding his conduct at an "environmental event" 12 years ago, where he went skinny-dipping and then asked two teenagers to bodypaint him. This may be the first bodypainting scandal I have heard of in world politics.
-Independent candidate David Popsecu, running in Sudbury, was invesitgated for "hate speech" after he responded to a debate question about gay rights with "homosexuals should be executed."
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Best... Day... Ever
Yes, the Dow Jones average had its largest single-day point gain yesterday, with news of a “new bailout” that involves the government directly investing in various troubled banks. The Bush administration announced the plan yesterday, which involves $250 billion on top of the $700 billion already funneled to financial firms, as well as additional guarantees of bank transactions from the FDIC. Bush himself argued that the move is “essential so that the free market can continue to function,” though grumbling from some conservative allies suggested that the government might essentially be destroying the free market in order to save it. The markets gained back about a third of what they lost last week.
Of course, the untold story if you read US newspapers and websites is that the markets weren’t necessarily reacting to something the US government did… the markets these days are global, and the huge groundswell was already building through the day around the world. It began because European leaders agreed on their own bank protection plan, which the US plan basically copied. The Europeans had no compunctions on what they were doing, calling this a “re-nationalization.” The big winner appeared to be French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who managed to get the various interested parties to stop yelling at each other long enough to broker a deal.
The European leaders emphasized that “no bank will be allowed to fail,” and vaguely implied criticisms that the expensive US bailout was both late-arriving and ineffective. The French Financial Minister basically said that she would never have let Lehman Brothers fail on her watch. If you take a look at the history of the past couple decades, European nations have a varied history with nationalized banks, ranging from the catastrophe that was France’s governmental involvement with Credit Lyonnais to the unqualified success of the Swedish nationalization of its financial industry. However, this is different from those past experiences because it involves every EU nation rather than individual nations acting on their own. It seems to be what many economists were calling for all along and has certainly had the success in drawing a market reaction that the initial reveal of the so-called “Paulson Plan” did not.
One interesting aspect of this crisis may be the continued emergence of the EU as a modern superpower. Many in the United States still think of ourselves as the world’s only superpower, but that’s certainly not the case in an economic sense, and that may be the most important one. The EU and China have made massive strides in recent years, to the point where the EU economy may be smaller but better managed, and the Chinese economy is large enough for that nation to start running foreign policy based on monetary aide. I asked a week or so ago what the big change that comes out of the current financial crisis will be, and it may end up being American recognition of the EU as a collective power on the world stage.
Of course, the untold story if you read US newspapers and websites is that the markets weren’t necessarily reacting to something the US government did… the markets these days are global, and the huge groundswell was already building through the day around the world. It began because European leaders agreed on their own bank protection plan, which the US plan basically copied. The Europeans had no compunctions on what they were doing, calling this a “re-nationalization.” The big winner appeared to be French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who managed to get the various interested parties to stop yelling at each other long enough to broker a deal.
The European leaders emphasized that “no bank will be allowed to fail,” and vaguely implied criticisms that the expensive US bailout was both late-arriving and ineffective. The French Financial Minister basically said that she would never have let Lehman Brothers fail on her watch. If you take a look at the history of the past couple decades, European nations have a varied history with nationalized banks, ranging from the catastrophe that was France’s governmental involvement with Credit Lyonnais to the unqualified success of the Swedish nationalization of its financial industry. However, this is different from those past experiences because it involves every EU nation rather than individual nations acting on their own. It seems to be what many economists were calling for all along and has certainly had the success in drawing a market reaction that the initial reveal of the so-called “Paulson Plan” did not.
One interesting aspect of this crisis may be the continued emergence of the EU as a modern superpower. Many in the United States still think of ourselves as the world’s only superpower, but that’s certainly not the case in an economic sense, and that may be the most important one. The EU and China have made massive strides in recent years, to the point where the EU economy may be smaller but better managed, and the Chinese economy is large enough for that nation to start running foreign policy based on monetary aide. I asked a week or so ago what the big change that comes out of the current financial crisis will be, and it may end up being American recognition of the EU as a collective power on the world stage.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Welcome to the the Sports World, China
This summer, China was very eager to tell the world how modern and advanced it was. They welcomed the world the the 2008 Summer Olympics, spent billions and billions of dollars, and went to extreme lengths to make sure everybody stayed on-message. And China did win more gold medals than any other nation this summer. However, having a well-funded sports system is not the same thing as being a member of the moder, capitalist sports world. A news story today finally convinced me that China is ready.
Wang Hao, a two-time Olympic silver medalist in Table Tennis, was arrested thursday in Shanghai and has been ordered to get counseling. Finally, a Chinese Pacman Jones! Apparently Mr. Wang emerged, drunk, from a karaoke club and decided to urinate on the outside of the building. A security guard attempted to stop him from doing so, and the two came to blows. My favorite part is what Wang reportedly yelled while trying to punch the guard: "I am the famous Wang Hao! I am the World Champion! Who cares if I beat you?" Awesome.
Table Tennis (or "Ping Pong", as we uncultured Americans like to call it), has long been one of the most popular sports in China. Wang is a major star in the country's professional ping pong league. The coach of his club, Bayi, said that he may face additional punishment from the team, though he did not elaborate.
As China becomes more of a world economic leader, and continues to shift to a more modern, capitalist society, incidents like this will become more and more common. Chinese culture is usually described as "collectivist" rather than "individualist"... it has never been a celebrity culture. But that may be changing. This summer, the world got to see just how big athletes like basketball player Yao Ming, runner Liu Xiang, and badminton star Lin Dan are in their homeland. And it turns out that, if you have enough celebrities, some of them will have trouble dealing with fame, collectivism or no.
Another aspect of this that interests me is the punishment. He has to get counseling? Time was Wang would have simply disappeared from the scene after bringing "shame" to his country in this way, but now we don't even know if he'll miss any matches for his pro team. China likes to think of itself, increasingly, as a meritocracy, a country where, if you work hard enough, you can get ahead. This is new, but it's also different from the "American Dream" we like to talk about here. Yes, Wang is being treated differently because he is a celebrity. In China, that's not really something that's questioned. If he's famous, it's because he's better. There's none of this "all men are created equal" business. If you're as good as them, why aren't you where they are, is the question that's asked.
As we saw this summer, China's going through a period of intense change, and incidents like this are a small part of that. Anyway, I think that's about enough analysis for a "guy-pees-on-wall" story.
Wang Hao, a two-time Olympic silver medalist in Table Tennis, was arrested thursday in Shanghai and has been ordered to get counseling. Finally, a Chinese Pacman Jones! Apparently Mr. Wang emerged, drunk, from a karaoke club and decided to urinate on the outside of the building. A security guard attempted to stop him from doing so, and the two came to blows. My favorite part is what Wang reportedly yelled while trying to punch the guard: "I am the famous Wang Hao! I am the World Champion! Who cares if I beat you?" Awesome.
Table Tennis (or "Ping Pong", as we uncultured Americans like to call it), has long been one of the most popular sports in China. Wang is a major star in the country's professional ping pong league. The coach of his club, Bayi, said that he may face additional punishment from the team, though he did not elaborate.
As China becomes more of a world economic leader, and continues to shift to a more modern, capitalist society, incidents like this will become more and more common. Chinese culture is usually described as "collectivist" rather than "individualist"... it has never been a celebrity culture. But that may be changing. This summer, the world got to see just how big athletes like basketball player Yao Ming, runner Liu Xiang, and badminton star Lin Dan are in their homeland. And it turns out that, if you have enough celebrities, some of them will have trouble dealing with fame, collectivism or no.
Another aspect of this that interests me is the punishment. He has to get counseling? Time was Wang would have simply disappeared from the scene after bringing "shame" to his country in this way, but now we don't even know if he'll miss any matches for his pro team. China likes to think of itself, increasingly, as a meritocracy, a country where, if you work hard enough, you can get ahead. This is new, but it's also different from the "American Dream" we like to talk about here. Yes, Wang is being treated differently because he is a celebrity. In China, that's not really something that's questioned. If he's famous, it's because he's better. There's none of this "all men are created equal" business. If you're as good as them, why aren't you where they are, is the question that's asked.
As we saw this summer, China's going through a period of intense change, and incidents like this are a small part of that. Anyway, I think that's about enough analysis for a "guy-pees-on-wall" story.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Can You Sexually Abuse Yourself?
According to the state of Ohio, the answer is now apparently yes. Remember my post about sex offenders and Oprah? I discussed some of the local and state laws where I live in regards to registered sex offenders. Now comes the case of a 15-year-old girl in Licking Valley, Ohio, which is in a county adjacent to my own, and is garnering national attention. I first read about the story on Salon's women's issues blog Broadsheet (get it?), and they heard about the story from ABC.
What happened, apparently, is that the girl took naked pictures of herself and sent them to a bunch of people at her high school. Stupid, certainly. Probably deserving of some sort of punishment from some authority, yes. But does it make the girl a sex offender? Ohio law seems to says it does. The girl has been charged with "illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material" and "possession of criminal tools." (i.e. her cell phone) If she is convicted, she could be kept in juvenile detention until she's 21 and be forced to register as a sex offender (because she was caught distributing child pornography) for the next 20 years. Not only that, but charges may also be filed against the people she sent the photos to, since they were in possession of child pornography... a fifth-degree felony in Ohio. If the law is followed, they may all be forced to register as a sex offender for the next ten years, simply for, essentially, receiving a text message from one of their classmates.
This is not the first time kids sending sexy pictures to each other has made front page news around here. The Columbus Dispatch has regularly featured stories about local schools having trouble controlling the spread of sexually explicit material, usually taken by students of themselves, over cell phones. This is a culture where sexual images are readily available to anyone with an internet connection, but at the same time the age of consent is 18, by which time most teens have been dating for years. This is the first time I've heard of this level of charges being filed, however.
It's debateable when teenagers are truly able to make decisions regarding their own bodies for themselves in an adult manner, and of course it will vary from person to person. Obviously in this case the girl exercised extremely bad judgment, and is probably not ready for any of that. My position is that there's only so much control parents and schools have, in the end, and if the goal is to genuinely help the kids instead of simply control them, then the best solution is widespread sex education and availability of contraceptives. But that is only my opinion.
What this case does make clear is that our laws on this subject haven't kept up with changes in technology and resultant changes in our culture. To say that our culture is more sexualized may or may not be true (sure, girls didn't send naked pics over their phone in Little House on the Prairie days, but they did marry Almanzo from the next town over at age 16), but it is certainly true that more and more parts of ourselves are becoming public, and members of the digital generation need time to learn where to draw that line just as they need time to learn everything else. If my work in the state legislature has taught me anything, it's that when you make an arbitrary rule, it will have consequences you did not foresee... and usually not good ones.
What happened, apparently, is that the girl took naked pictures of herself and sent them to a bunch of people at her high school. Stupid, certainly. Probably deserving of some sort of punishment from some authority, yes. But does it make the girl a sex offender? Ohio law seems to says it does. The girl has been charged with "illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material" and "possession of criminal tools." (i.e. her cell phone) If she is convicted, she could be kept in juvenile detention until she's 21 and be forced to register as a sex offender (because she was caught distributing child pornography) for the next 20 years. Not only that, but charges may also be filed against the people she sent the photos to, since they were in possession of child pornography... a fifth-degree felony in Ohio. If the law is followed, they may all be forced to register as a sex offender for the next ten years, simply for, essentially, receiving a text message from one of their classmates.
This is not the first time kids sending sexy pictures to each other has made front page news around here. The Columbus Dispatch has regularly featured stories about local schools having trouble controlling the spread of sexually explicit material, usually taken by students of themselves, over cell phones. This is a culture where sexual images are readily available to anyone with an internet connection, but at the same time the age of consent is 18, by which time most teens have been dating for years. This is the first time I've heard of this level of charges being filed, however.
It's debateable when teenagers are truly able to make decisions regarding their own bodies for themselves in an adult manner, and of course it will vary from person to person. Obviously in this case the girl exercised extremely bad judgment, and is probably not ready for any of that. My position is that there's only so much control parents and schools have, in the end, and if the goal is to genuinely help the kids instead of simply control them, then the best solution is widespread sex education and availability of contraceptives. But that is only my opinion.
What this case does make clear is that our laws on this subject haven't kept up with changes in technology and resultant changes in our culture. To say that our culture is more sexualized may or may not be true (sure, girls didn't send naked pics over their phone in Little House on the Prairie days, but they did marry Almanzo from the next town over at age 16), but it is certainly true that more and more parts of ourselves are becoming public, and members of the digital generation need time to learn where to draw that line just as they need time to learn everything else. If my work in the state legislature has taught me anything, it's that when you make an arbitrary rule, it will have consequences you did not foresee... and usually not good ones.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Movie Reviews for People Who Go to the Dollar Movies After Work: Swing Vote
I went to the discount theatre today with the vague intention of seeing Brendan Fraser's Journey to the Center of the Earth, but when I got there I decided to go with my gut and saw Swing Vote. This isn't a bad movie, necessarily. It's an okay movie stuck with Kevin Costner as its star, and that just brings down the whole proceeding. Costner has had good movies before, but even in them he was the stoic rock around which the action moved. Here he's just a dumbass, and the movie seems to think we like dumbasses because we're dumbasses, too.
Costner plays Ernest "Bud" Johnson, a drunk and a nobody. He's a single dad to a fifth-grade-or-so daughter who's much smarter than he deserves ("What do you want to be when you grow up?" "I go back and forth between veterinarian and chairman of the Fed."), making me seriously wonder how his sperm produced this bright little girl, especially when we later see her mother is even worse. Bud is the sort of guy who responds to his daughter telling him she registered him to vote through the mail with "That's just great. I could get jury duty now!" He seems to love her, but then forgets about her repeatedly. I hate Bud. Even when Bud is theoretically redeemed at the end, mostly by admitting that he's a dumbass, I still hated him.
Through some arbitrary plot mechanics that the movie knows better than to dwell on, an entire presidential election comes down to Bud's vote. The state of New Mexico is tied, and due to a voting machine malfunction that caused Bud's "vote" to not count (I'm gonna skip over a whole part here made more complicated than it needs to be, involving how Bud didn't really try to vote), he gets to re-vote ten days later. The global news media (Aaron Brown, Chris Matthews, Arianna Huffington, etc. all have extended cameos) descends upon Bud's tiny hometown of Texico, New Mexico, as do both candidates.
This is where the movie finds itself as much as it does. The candidates include the republican President Boone (Kelsey Grammer), and a democrat from Vermont named Donald Greenleaf (Dennis Hopper). Neither of these men is given much of personality, though Greenleaf, probably unintentionally, reminds viewers of John McCain. A lot. Maybe it was just me, I dunno. Anyway, both of them sycophantically try to please Bud in whatever way that they can, which Bud buys hook, line, and sinker but his daughter Molly immediately sees through. We also spend time with the candidate's advisors, with Stanley Tucci as the President's ruthless Rovian operative and Nathan Lane (perhaps the most restrained I've ever seen him) as an idealist democrat who is just so sick of losing it hurts.
The best parts of the movie come when the candidates fall all over each other in an attempt to conform to Bud's every whim, with the Republican coming out in favor of gay marriage and the Democrat denouncing abortion rights based on off-hand remarks. The campaign commercials in which they do so are absolutely hysterical. We also see each of the candidates questioning, in his own way, whether any of this is right, and how far he's willing to go. Though a bit earnest, all of that works. There's also a fairly worthless side plot involving a pretty hispanic reporter and her boss (George Lopez, who is totally pointless but at least doesn't have time to ruin the movie), but it's also fairly inoffensive.
Where the movie runs into trouble is in the relationship between Bud and his daughter, and the fact that it's front and center more than we really want it to be. Normally, I appreciate character development, but it just doesn't work. There's also a truly bizarre shaky-cam drama detour at the top of the third act that definitely didn't need to be there... it's as if the film-makers think it's the key incident in the film, but the audience just wants it to go away. In the end, Bud gives a long, vaguely poetic speech on national television that is Costner's best moment in the movie by far, but it doesn't feel earned and I was left wondering if we were supposed to think his daughter wrote it for him.
This is a movie with some thought behind it, that manages to comment on our system without seeming like a polemic for one side or the other. However, it runs into trouble trying to make those ideas into a movie. We're left with a comedy with many funny moments, but also moments like that when the Secretary of State and Attorney General of New Mexico show up at Bud's trailer to tell him about the situation. He assumes they're social services and pleads with them not to take his daughter away. I was left not sure whether this scene was supposed to be funny or not. And that's why this is definitely a dollar movie.
Costner plays Ernest "Bud" Johnson, a drunk and a nobody. He's a single dad to a fifth-grade-or-so daughter who's much smarter than he deserves ("What do you want to be when you grow up?" "I go back and forth between veterinarian and chairman of the Fed."), making me seriously wonder how his sperm produced this bright little girl, especially when we later see her mother is even worse. Bud is the sort of guy who responds to his daughter telling him she registered him to vote through the mail with "That's just great. I could get jury duty now!" He seems to love her, but then forgets about her repeatedly. I hate Bud. Even when Bud is theoretically redeemed at the end, mostly by admitting that he's a dumbass, I still hated him.
Through some arbitrary plot mechanics that the movie knows better than to dwell on, an entire presidential election comes down to Bud's vote. The state of New Mexico is tied, and due to a voting machine malfunction that caused Bud's "vote" to not count (I'm gonna skip over a whole part here made more complicated than it needs to be, involving how Bud didn't really try to vote), he gets to re-vote ten days later. The global news media (Aaron Brown, Chris Matthews, Arianna Huffington, etc. all have extended cameos) descends upon Bud's tiny hometown of Texico, New Mexico, as do both candidates.
This is where the movie finds itself as much as it does. The candidates include the republican President Boone (Kelsey Grammer), and a democrat from Vermont named Donald Greenleaf (Dennis Hopper). Neither of these men is given much of personality, though Greenleaf, probably unintentionally, reminds viewers of John McCain. A lot. Maybe it was just me, I dunno. Anyway, both of them sycophantically try to please Bud in whatever way that they can, which Bud buys hook, line, and sinker but his daughter Molly immediately sees through. We also spend time with the candidate's advisors, with Stanley Tucci as the President's ruthless Rovian operative and Nathan Lane (perhaps the most restrained I've ever seen him) as an idealist democrat who is just so sick of losing it hurts.
The best parts of the movie come when the candidates fall all over each other in an attempt to conform to Bud's every whim, with the Republican coming out in favor of gay marriage and the Democrat denouncing abortion rights based on off-hand remarks. The campaign commercials in which they do so are absolutely hysterical. We also see each of the candidates questioning, in his own way, whether any of this is right, and how far he's willing to go. Though a bit earnest, all of that works. There's also a fairly worthless side plot involving a pretty hispanic reporter and her boss (George Lopez, who is totally pointless but at least doesn't have time to ruin the movie), but it's also fairly inoffensive.
Where the movie runs into trouble is in the relationship between Bud and his daughter, and the fact that it's front and center more than we really want it to be. Normally, I appreciate character development, but it just doesn't work. There's also a truly bizarre shaky-cam drama detour at the top of the third act that definitely didn't need to be there... it's as if the film-makers think it's the key incident in the film, but the audience just wants it to go away. In the end, Bud gives a long, vaguely poetic speech on national television that is Costner's best moment in the movie by far, but it doesn't feel earned and I was left wondering if we were supposed to think his daughter wrote it for him.
This is a movie with some thought behind it, that manages to comment on our system without seeming like a polemic for one side or the other. However, it runs into trouble trying to make those ideas into a movie. We're left with a comedy with many funny moments, but also moments like that when the Secretary of State and Attorney General of New Mexico show up at Bud's trailer to tell him about the situation. He assumes they're social services and pleads with them not to take his daughter away. I was left not sure whether this scene was supposed to be funny or not. And that's why this is definitely a dollar movie.
MemeWatch: Republican Rage
Nearly every news outlet (except, of course, for FoxNews, which seems to be pre-occupied with the fact that Sarah Palin's face is too wrinkly on the latest cover of Newsweek) has run a story in the past few days about the rising level of anger at McCain campaign rallies. The McCain campaign has always had him asking things like "Who is the real Barack Obama?" but lately when the Senators pulls out that line he's been met with angry screams of "traitor," "terrorist," and even "kill him!" When he takes questions from the audience, as he often does, they have mostly turned into supporter after supporter begging him to "take it to" Obama. With Obama pulling away in the polls, the raw nerves of the Republican base are exposed, and they're showing up on primetime network news.
So, is all this overblown? And where is it coming from? Well, the answer to the first question is both "yes" and "no." Helpful, huh? The McCain campaign has no control over the fact that they're going to attract some crazies (just as Obama has no control over the far left's support). This is a situation that some on the right thought would never occur again, that they had built a permanent majority, so there's a level of anger. And it's true that Obama's a true liberal, something that hasn't been successful on the national stage since JFK, (I would argue that we've had several true conservatives) so that has led to the usual (in my opinion outdated) charges of "socialism." And that's fair game. If they want to talk about how "liberal," Obama is, as they did with Gore and Kerry, that's fine. And this is, of course, nothing new. Republicans did their best to imply that John Kerry was French because he liked windsurfing. I can't make something like that up.
The problem is two-fold. The tone with Kerry and Gore was more mocking (chants of "flip-flop, flip-flop"), but now it seems more like an angry mob, who if pointed in the right direction would be ready with a rope and tree branch. That may sound extreme, but I didn't make it up. It's being implied and outright stated across the left two thirds of the media spectrum, from Chris Matthews to David Gergen. And because Obama is Black, it adds a racial tinge to some of this stuff. The other issue is that people weren't seeing McCain and/or Palin doing anything about it. When you hear one of your supporters yell "kill him," about your opponent, something needs to be done about that. McCain started to do that a little yesterday, assuring a woman in his crowd that there was no need to be scared of the idea of Obama as president (after she said "I hear he's an arab."), but it should have been reflexive, and it obviously wasn't.
There is the perception that at least some of this has come from the official mouthpieces of the McCain campaign, which is interesting because it's a new twist (Bush denied all links to "Swiftboat Veterans for Truth"). They're running official ads about Bill Ayers, the Chicago politician, and Palin actually said in Florida this week that Obama "thinks this country is so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists." McCain's campaign has openly said that they're going negative in response to falling poll numbers. So it's a difference of source from previous years.
Here's a question that may or may not be relevant... will it work? I doubt it, and I'm normally a believer in the power of negative advertising. The Bill Ayers business doesn't hold up under any sort of scrutiny, and all it takes is a one sentence explanation ("So... you're blaming me for something that an acquaintance I hadn't met yet did when I was eight?") to make the Republicans look like they're making something out of nothing (which, of course, they are). Perhaps more importantly, the economy is such an overwhelming issue at this point that it's hard to take anything else seriously. And, as someone said on MSNBC's Hardball yesterday, "Most Americans today think the Weather Underground was a rock band fronted by Lou Reed."
I don't mean this as a partisan screed. McCain has tried to calm things down a little in the past few days, though it's mostly resulted in him appearing to be at odds with his base. Lately he's spending a lot of time looking surprised at how bad things have gotten. And this meme only hurts his campaign, no matter what they did to cause it. In any case, don't take my word for it. Here are articles from the past day or so from CNN, Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/10/obama-called-traitor-agai_n_133613.html), Talking Points Memo (http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/10/bomb_obama.php), New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/us/politics/11campaign.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=slogin) Yahoo! (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081011/ap_on_el_pr/mccain_42;_ylt=Ak4Do42TCidwdG1eix_J5IJh24cA), and Salon.com (http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/?last_story=/opinion/walsh/election_2008/2008/10/11/current_mccainsdishonest/).
Enjoy.
So, is all this overblown? And where is it coming from? Well, the answer to the first question is both "yes" and "no." Helpful, huh? The McCain campaign has no control over the fact that they're going to attract some crazies (just as Obama has no control over the far left's support). This is a situation that some on the right thought would never occur again, that they had built a permanent majority, so there's a level of anger. And it's true that Obama's a true liberal, something that hasn't been successful on the national stage since JFK, (I would argue that we've had several true conservatives) so that has led to the usual (in my opinion outdated) charges of "socialism." And that's fair game. If they want to talk about how "liberal," Obama is, as they did with Gore and Kerry, that's fine. And this is, of course, nothing new. Republicans did their best to imply that John Kerry was French because he liked windsurfing. I can't make something like that up.
The problem is two-fold. The tone with Kerry and Gore was more mocking (chants of "flip-flop, flip-flop"), but now it seems more like an angry mob, who if pointed in the right direction would be ready with a rope and tree branch. That may sound extreme, but I didn't make it up. It's being implied and outright stated across the left two thirds of the media spectrum, from Chris Matthews to David Gergen. And because Obama is Black, it adds a racial tinge to some of this stuff. The other issue is that people weren't seeing McCain and/or Palin doing anything about it. When you hear one of your supporters yell "kill him," about your opponent, something needs to be done about that. McCain started to do that a little yesterday, assuring a woman in his crowd that there was no need to be scared of the idea of Obama as president (after she said "I hear he's an arab."), but it should have been reflexive, and it obviously wasn't.
There is the perception that at least some of this has come from the official mouthpieces of the McCain campaign, which is interesting because it's a new twist (Bush denied all links to "Swiftboat Veterans for Truth"). They're running official ads about Bill Ayers, the Chicago politician, and Palin actually said in Florida this week that Obama "thinks this country is so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists." McCain's campaign has openly said that they're going negative in response to falling poll numbers. So it's a difference of source from previous years.
Here's a question that may or may not be relevant... will it work? I doubt it, and I'm normally a believer in the power of negative advertising. The Bill Ayers business doesn't hold up under any sort of scrutiny, and all it takes is a one sentence explanation ("So... you're blaming me for something that an acquaintance I hadn't met yet did when I was eight?") to make the Republicans look like they're making something out of nothing (which, of course, they are). Perhaps more importantly, the economy is such an overwhelming issue at this point that it's hard to take anything else seriously. And, as someone said on MSNBC's Hardball yesterday, "Most Americans today think the Weather Underground was a rock band fronted by Lou Reed."
I don't mean this as a partisan screed. McCain has tried to calm things down a little in the past few days, though it's mostly resulted in him appearing to be at odds with his base. Lately he's spending a lot of time looking surprised at how bad things have gotten. And this meme only hurts his campaign, no matter what they did to cause it. In any case, don't take my word for it. Here are articles from the past day or so from CNN, Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/10/obama-called-traitor-agai_n_133613.html), Talking Points Memo (http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/10/bomb_obama.php), New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/us/politics/11campaign.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=slogin) Yahoo! (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081011/ap_on_el_pr/mccain_42;_ylt=Ak4Do42TCidwdG1eix_J5IJh24cA), and Salon.com (http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/?last_story=/opinion/walsh/election_2008/2008/10/11/current_mccainsdishonest/).
Enjoy.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Bits: Shark Jesus Edition
Pic courtesy of the-amazing.com-According to NewScientist, Turkish creationist Adnan Oktar is offering $7.5 trillion dollars to anyone who can produce an intermediate-form fossil proving evolution. Um, haven't we already found those? I mean, the creationists have an argument ready against them, but we've already found, you know, fishes with legs. No sources have said where he would get that much money. Oktar recently sold 10,000 copies of a book denying evolution, and successfully campaigned to have Richard Dawkins' website banned in Turkey.
-San Francisco TV station KTVU reports that they're going to put a net under the Golden Gate bridge to prevent suicides. I'm trying to picture the thought process here... "You mean I can't jump off the Golden Gate? I'll have to use a less famous bridge, or maybe take a lot of pills? I dunno, maybe I'll just go on living then..."
-Shark Jesus! Scientists at an aquarium in Richmond, Virginia have reported that a female blacktip shark conceived without any male input... a virgin birth. The fetus was discovered during a necropsy on the mother shark after it had died of "complications." It contains no genetic material from a male. This is apparently not the first time this has happened, as there is much discussion in the linked article about "parthenogenesis," which apparently does not mean what Willow Rosenberg led me to believe it meant.
-In other news, the world economy continues its drain spiral. The Finance ministers from the G7 nations are meeting in Washington DC. Will they come up with a solution? Is the devil on the doorstep wearing galoshes?
-Alternative artist Banksy has opened an art installation in New York City that is a sort of insane magic pet store. I cannot make this stuff up. Make sure to watch the video with the dancing chicken nuggets, and the college-age girl wondering "Are they real?"
-Surprise! Not only does Life on Mars not suck, it got decent ratings last night. But not quite as decent as CBS' anti-science procedural (and yet another foreign remake) Eleventh Hour. "It's like that scary Fringe show, but safe and boring for old people!" I think that's actually their advertising campaign.
-Free TV on the Internet: Wednesday's episode of Bones, in my opinion the best procedural on TV, was about a murder in a tight-knit religious community on Chesapeake Bay. This brings out inherent conflicts among the characters, with Brennan getting lines like "You are all united by your shared superstition" and "Do these people believe in DNA?" Oh, yeah, it's called "The He in the She." Watch it here.
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